
Class _JJi/_M^ 
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COPYRIGHT DEPOSrr. 



THE LURE OF LONDON 



BOOKS BY LILIAN WHITING 

The World Beautiful 

First, Second, and Third Series 

After Her Death 

The Spiritual Significance 

From Dreamland Sent 

Kate Field : A Record 

Study of The Life and Poetry of Mrs. Browning 

The World Beautiful In Books 

Boston Days 

The Life Radiant 

The Land of Enchantment 

The Outlook Beautiful 

From Dream to Vision of Life 

The Joy That No Man Taketh From You 

The Florence of Landor 

Italy, The Magic Land 

Louise Chandler Moulton, Poet and Friend 

Paris The Beautiful 

Life Transfigured 

The Brownings : Their Life and Art 

Athens, The Violet-Crowned 

The Lure of London 




Reproduced by permission oj the National Portrait Gallery 

Her Majesty Queen Victoria, in her Coronation Robes 

from the painting by Sir George Hayler, National Portrait Gallery 

Frontispiece 



THE 

LURE OF LONDON 



BY 

LILIAN WHITING 

AUTHOR OP "the BROWNINGS: THEIR LIFE AND ART," " PARIS 

THE BEAUTIFUL," "THE FLORENCE OF LANDOR," 

"the world BEAUTIFUL," ETC. 



Illustrated from Photographs 



NON- REFER! 




^WVAD-Q3S 



BOSTON 

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 

1914 



\\J5S 



Copyright, 1914, 
By Little, Brown, and Company. 

All rights reserved 
Published October, 1914 



THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. 



OCT 22 i9l4 



'CI.A387161 



TO 

EDGAR JOHN AND MAREN FELLOWES 

WHOSE WEDDED LIFE INTERPRETS THAT "COMPLETER POETRY" 
WHICH TRANSFIGURES THE DAILY DUTIES AND DEMANDS ; WHOSE 
GRACIOUS ENCOURAGEMENT AND BENEFICENT KINDNESS HAVE 
INVESTED THIS RICORDO DI LONDON WITH CHARM AND ASSOCIA- 
TION THAT CAN NEVER FADE FROM MEMORY, AND WHOSE 

"... loveliness of perfect deeds. 
More strong than all poetic thought " 

INSPIRES THE EVER-GRATEFUL DEVOTION OF 

LILIAN WHITING 
London, May, 1914, 



" What is so great as friendship, let us carry it with what grandeur 
of spirit we can. Let us be silent, — so we may hear the whisper of the 
gods." — Emebson 



CONTENTS 

Chapter Page 

I The Lure of London 1 

II Hyde Park Corner and Apsley House 18 

III The Royal Institution of Great 

Britain 49 

IV The National Galleries of Art . . 79 
V Clubs, Societies, and Movements . . 142 

VI Color and Romance of London . . 176 
VII English Sports and Amusements . . 211 
VIII Factors, Personal Forces, and Cus- 
toms 229 

IX The Living Influence of Victorian 

Literature 254 

X Annie Besant and the Theosophical 

Society 305 

XI The Primate of England in Lambeth 

Palace 314 

XII Archdeacon Wilberforce and West- 
minster Abbey 331 

XIII The Spirit of London Life 348 

Index 357 



" The old order changeth, yielding place to new. 
And God fulfils Himself in many ways. 
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world." 

Alfred Lord Tennyson 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



Her Majesty Queen Victoria in her Coronation Robes ^ 

Frontispiece 

Trafalgar Square and the Nelson Monument Facing page 14 

Hyde Park Corner and Wellington Statue . . 

A Corner in Westminster Abbey 

Waterloo Gallery (sometimes called Wellington 
Chamber), Apsley House 

Statue of Charles Darwin 

Michael Faraday 

Sir Oliver Lodge 

Parliament Square 

Dante Gabriel Rossetti 

Edward William Lane 

Sir William Crookes 

Green Drawing-Room, Windsor Castle . . . 

St. Clement Danes, with Statue of Gladstone 

Old Houses of London, showing the Old Curi- 
osity Shop 

Drawing-Room, Devonshire House 

Farnboro House, residence of Eugenie, former 
Empress of France 

Sculpture Gallery, Chats worth 

Blackfriars Bridge, with the Dome of St. Paul's ' 

ix 



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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



Ball Room and Concert Hall, Buckingham 

Palace Facing 

Lord Lytton ("Owen Meredith") " 

Moorish Room, Lord Leighton's Villa, Ken- 
sington 

Albert Memorial Chapel, Windsor Castle . . 

Sir William Huggins 

Algernon Charles Swinburne 

Annie Besant 

Choir of St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle 

The Library, Lambeth Palace 

Royal Chamber, Houses of Parliament . . . 

Basil Wilberforce, Archdeacon of Westminster 

Statesmen's Corner, Westminster Abbey . . 

The Choir, St. Paul's Cathedral 



page 



244 ' ^ 
254 

262 • ' 

268 ' 

272 

290 '' 

306 ' ^ 

314 

318 

324 ^ 

328' 

346 

354 



THE LURE OF LONDON 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

" London, that great sea, whose ebb and flow 
At once is deep and loud . . . . " 

Shelley. 

London in June, in the height of its brilliant 
season, is the lure of all the world. The stu- 
dent of humanity need not exert himself to 
circumnavigate the planet on which he has 
taken up a more or less temporary residence; 
the observer of mankind need not go around 
the world for his study; all the world, so to 
speak, is before him in a London season. At 
receptions, in drawing-rooms whose splendors 
are drawn from old-world tapestries, from 
paintings that the doges of Venice may have 
loved, or that were the "hit" of last year's Salon 
in Paris; from classic fragments from Greece, 
ivory carvings and rarest inlaid mosaic from 
India, — one meets in the groups of women in 
bewildering costumes and men brave with 
orders, representatives from every quarter of 
the globe; Indian princes, and the women of 

1 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

their rank, gleaming with jewels whose blazing 
brilliancy fairly startles the eye; Australian 
colonists, lured back to the haunting charm of 
a London season; important Canadian officials, 
with their wives and a daughter who is to be 
presented at one of the royal drawing-rooms; 
the Khedive of Egypt; the Chinese savant in 
his strange robes; a prince of the Church in the 
insignia of his scarlet robe and jeweled cross; 
the hermit, late from his solitary sojourn in the 
mountains of Arabia; a Minister of the French 
cabinet; the latest fashionable English painter; 
the American who owns the earth and who has 
probably already familiarized himself with the 
greater part of his possessions; a wandering 
priest from Syria, — all these, and more, min- 
gling with the peerage and the aristocracy of 
England, make up a social spectacle whose bril- 
liancy and variety is unrivalled in the entire 
world. No aspects of social splendor in any 
city on the earth can equal those of London dur- 
ing her season. From her vast colonial posses- 
sions — India, Egypt, Australia, Canada — they 
come trooping back with the loyalty of pride 
and enthusiasm; the Continent is widely repre- 
sented, from Russia to Italy, and from France 
to Hungary; and to the American woman of 
wealth, social rank, and culture, London is an 
earthly paradise and it is an open question 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

whether she would wiUingly exchange it even 
for Paradise the Blest. Men whose names are 
those to conjure with and who embody the 
forces of their times, and women whose beauty 
and charm may be as potent as those of Helen 
of Troy, make up society in London for these 
few opening weeks of the summer. There is no 
inanity in London society. The spectacle offers 
the latest word in fashion, but fashion and beauty 
and luxury are yet seen as merely the fit set- 
ting to a social significance which for wit, and 
grace, and intensity of interest is absolutely 
unequalled. 

It is comparatively easy to see the outside of 
London; he who runs may read, and if he does 
not run too swiftly, he may read a great deal. 
But the real London is another matter. 

" Men and women make the world 
As head and heart make human life," 

says Mrs. Browning, and she thus expresses 
the inner truth of human progress. In London 
the fate of an empire may hang upon a woman's 
smile. Society exists for its true purpose, that 
of intelligent human intercourse, rather than 
for display and trivial interchange. This fact 
alone lifts the social world of London to a high 
plane. The splendor and luxurious beauty of 
all its fetes and entertainments; its dinners, 

3 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

and grand balls, and magnificent evening recep- 
tions serve as the framework for the real struc- 
ture of life in its highest expression — conver- 
sation. It is from the social alembic that the 
elixir vitse of conversation is distilled. "I talk, 
not to tell what I think, but to find out what I 
think," remarked Doctor Holmes, and in these 
words the delightful Autocrat perfectly expresses 
the art and the power possible to conversa- 
tional intercourse. Conversation is direct per- 
sonal revelation or its reverse! Conversation 
is experimental; it is an encounter of wits, of 
commentators upon events and ideas and move- 
ments. Conversation is the finest of the fine 
arts and is that supreme art to which all others 
are tributary. In the diary of Pepys he ex- 
claims, after an evening in the great world: 
"But, O Lord! what poor stuff they did talk." 
His shrewd observation must not infrequently 
recur to one who has been doomed to an hour of 
inanities rather than ideas. Society, indeed, 
should be the best expression of humanity, and 
London society at its best comes marvellously 
near the fulfillment of this lofty ideal. When 
the Marchioness of Lansdowne gave that not- 
able reception in Lansdowne House, Berkeley 
Square, in April of this present year of 1914, 
where the distinguished hostess received a great 
number of the Unionist peers, nearly all the 

4 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

Unionist members of Parliament, and the stand- 
ing candidates of the Unionist organizations in 
London, inviting to meet them other strong 
supporters of the cause and many of her per- 
sonal friends who had not so identified them- 
selves with Union ideals, she contributed more 
real aid, as all London acknowledged, by that 
one evening's entertainment, than a year's 
public meetings and other propaganda could 
have done to the party whose faith she espoused 
and worked to further. It is a little curious, 
by the way, that in a country where women 
have such unusual political influence and so 
much absolute power as they have in England, 
some of them should feel it necessary to hurl 
stones through Bond Street windows and de- 
molish priceless works of art with a hatchet, by 
way of establishing the presumption that they 
are peculiarly well calculated to play a leading 
part in guiding national destinies. 

Lady Lansdowne's party was frankly and 
avowedly political. Lansdowne House was a 
scene for a painter of the human drama that 
night. The Marchioness, assisted by the Mar- 
quis, received her guests in the library. The 
grand staircase, up which the throng passed to 
greet the hostess, was lined with masses of 
rhododendrons in bewildering bloom of rose 
and pearl and violet colored blossoms, con- 

5 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

trasted with the vivid gold of daffodils and 
stately Madonna lilies; while the library and 
the salons were decorated with groups of palm 
and banks of roses. Lady Lansdowne in 
black, wearing her jeweled orders of the Crown 
of India and St. John of Jerusalem, the order 
of Victoria and Albert, and the Coronation 
medal of King Edward, was a picture to remem- 
ber. Lord Lansdowne, wearing the star of the 
Order of the Garter and other insignia; and the 
corps diplomatique, in their court dress; the 
chefs de mission, who were then in London, with 
the naval and military attaches, and the Coun- 
cillors, all in full regalia, with other guests ar- 
rayed in the most exquisite creations of the 
great artists in dress, made up a scene which for 
brilliancy and fascination of color effects has 
perhaps never been surpassed. Historic names 
abounded. The Duke and Duchess of Welling- 
ton, the Duke and Duchess of Sutherland, and 
the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, the Mar- 
quis and Marchioness of Londonderry, the Earl 
and Countess of Lytton, Lord and Lady Bal- 
four, Adeline, Duchess of Bedford (a sister of 
Lady Henry Somerset), and a great list of the 
peerage and the famous men of war, statesman- 
ship, and affairs, made up a gathering long to be 
remembered in the social history of London. 
The present Greek Minister, M. Gennadius, 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

is an important figure in London, to such a 
degree, indeed, that although he has reached 
the age limit fixed by Greece in her diplomatic 
service laws, the Greek government, repre- 
sented by M. Venizelos, the Premier, has 
yielded to the deep desire of England that one 
so admirably fitted to deal with state problems 
at the present critical juncture should not be 
recalled. It is the important individualities in 
London that make society a force potent in 
progress. 

With all the various movements whose raison 
d^etre is political influence, or the betterment of 
conditions, the Court is in active sympathy. 
King George and Queen Mary are in daily 
participation with the multitudinous activities 
of London, and other members of the royal 
family are much in evidence. The peerage of 
England leads no idle life. The Marquis of 
Crewe, with his weight of responsibility as 
Secretary for India and Leader of the Upper 
Chamber, seldom refuses a request to partici- 
pate in meetings that have as their object the 
advancement of the people. The Institution 
of Mining and Metallurgy relies upon him as 
one of its most effective speakers at the annual 
banquet, and he has a deep and sympathetic 
interest in alL new inventions. The Earl of 
Cromer, whose important work on Egypt is an 

7 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

authority, is another of the well-known peers 
who are in constant touch with the forces of 
the day. Earl Curzon lends inspiration to 
many a cause. Lord Kitchener is deeply in- 
terested in the problem of the reclamation of 
land in Egypt, and the list of the British peer- 
age is largely synonymous with the list of men 
and women whose influence and personal par- 
ticipation in all that makes for progress are 
among the most valuable assets of England. 

All this brilliant and ever-changing and ever- 
renewing panorama helps to constitute the lure 
of London. Its irresistible attraction is felt in 
every country in the world. London is the in- 
tellectual capital, — the metropolis of progress. 

Yet, so unchanging does she sometimes seem 
in her stately splendor, as if preserved under 
amber and held by a spell of incalculable dura- 
tion, that a newly-arrived visitor would de- 
clare that over her neither Time nor Change 
held power. For her records are written in her 
thoroughfares; they are to be traced in her 
architectural aspects; they are inwrought with 
her monumental marbles. By some miraculous 
process of enchantment, the life of the dead 
centuries persists in the London of to-day. 
The Present is, indeed, the *'heir of all the ages" 
in a manner that asserts itself in that unmal- 
leable quality of general life which is one of the 

8 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

first things to force its recognition on the 
stranger. Conditions are not plastic, they are 
fixed; and to them the sojourner must adjust 
himself. He discovers at once that he cannot 
go about tilting at windmills. He might as 
well fly in the face of the law of gravitation as 
to attempt to oppose or modify one single ex- 
isting custom, practice, or habitual attitude of 
London. The stars in their courses do not re- 
volve with more unalterable orbits. The more 
swiftly one recognizes and accepts this truth, the 
better for his peace of mind. Once accepted, 
with absolute and unquestioning conviction, 
life flows on very well. Once accepted, too, 
the conditions are found to be very good, but 
they admit of no experimental variations. They 
provide for one certain phases of evolutionary 
experience. The first stage is resistance; the 
second submission; and these eventually lead 
to that of enjoyment. One begins by resisting 
and only discards that effort because it is worse 
than ineffectual and useless. Then he unwill- 
ingly bows his head to the yoke and submits 
because it is Hobson's choice; and he is as much 
surprised as any one when, some fine morning, 
he awakens quite enamored of his predeter- 
mined orbit. He is quite prepared not only 
to embrace, but to adore the conditions under 
which he must pursue his path while in the 

9 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

British metropolis. The lure of London then 
enters into one's life as a determining factor. 

When once the stranger thus adjusts himself 
to London and does not demand that London 
shall adjust itself to him, it becomes one of the 
most agreeable and harmonious of environ- 
ments. As everything runs in its own groove, 
there is the minimum of friction. The street 
traffic alone is a spectacle worth observation. 
The solar systems in their courses do not re- 
volve in more inevitable order. As a conse- 
quence, motor and other accidents are of rare 
occurrence. The unending procession flows 
through the streets with rhythmic regularity. 
The thoroughfares are peopled with traditions. 
At every turn a building that is a landmark in 
history, a memorial marking the site of some 
famous scene or deed, a church identified with 
some vital chapter of the nation's life, is seen, 
and one lingers and loiters, held under the spell 
of the mighty past. Nor is there any lack of 
points that are a special vantage ground of 
beauty. 

One of the most notable of these is Hyde 
Park Corner, where Piccadilly and Park Lane 
meet, and the crescent road, winding along the 
outskirts of Belgravia, intersects the entrance 
to Knightsbridge. The classic pillars forming 
the fagade to Apsley House, which was the 

10 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

nation's gift to Arthur Wellesley, the first Duke 
of Wellington, focus the attention. Almost in 
front of this splendid mansion (built in 1784, 
and in which the duke died in 1852) is the 
colossal equestrian statue of the Duke of Well- 
ington, which at sunset throws its shadow over 
the entrance to the house. This corner is one 
of the most beautiful and easily the most im- 
pressive in all London. The long vista down 
Piccadilly is aglow with life. Beyond the open- 
ing of Park Lane is seen Dudley House, the 
home of the Earl of Dudley, with its famous 
collection of pictures. Just beyond is Grosvenor 
House, with its extensive gardens, and still far- 
ther down, toward Marble Arch, the entrance to 
Hyde Park from Oxford Street, is that dream 
of an Italian palace, Dorchester House, with its 
magnificent grand staircase leading to open 
arcades and galleries of alabaster and golden 
backgrounds like the ancient Venetian palaces 
immortalized by Paul Veronese. Diagonally 
across Green Park are the majestic towers of 
Westminster Abbey and the House of Parlia- 
ment, with their filmy horizon of haze and shim- 
mering cloud effects so wonderfully caught by 
Whistler. In the middle distance is the vast 
pile of Buckingham Palace, with its fine new 
fagade, and the Memorial sculpture to Queen 
Victoria, catching a gleam of sunshine, while 

11 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

down Pall Mall flows an endless stream of human 
activities. Through the marble-arched entrance 
to Hyde Park the morning riders in Rotten Row 
are seen cantering, while the seats on either 
side are thronged with lookers-on. Under the 
noble trees that line the avenues motor cabs are 
flying, and the Park is beautiful with its rich 
bloom of flowers and the winding waters of the 
Serpentine. 

London, in the season, is resplendent. No 
metropolis in the world can vie with its regal 
splendor and magnificence. Paris is gay and 
charms one; Florence is enchanting and poetic; 
Naples bewitches the senses; Rome, stately, 
impressive, with an order of loveliness all her 
own, may forever hold one's allegiance; yet for 
sheer splendor and luxurious magnificence, Lon- 
don is unrivalled. Gabriele d'Annunzio is one 
of the enthusiasts over London. During a recent 
visit he said: "I am profoundly moved by the 
beauty of England — her perennial beauty — 
not alone her beauty in summer. I know no 
city that is so profoundly moving as London. 
Nowhere else is there such a constant play of 
light and shade. What could be more pictur- 
esque, more Turneresque than dawn, as I saw it 
stealing over London.'* But the beauty of 
London is of her own order, and it grows upon 
one with increasing familiarity. London has 

12 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

no such Apocalyptic vision as that disclosed 
from the summit of the Janiculum in Rome, or 
any such fascination as the view over Florence 
from Bellosguardo, or that of Naples and the 
bay from the drive on the Posilipo; it has no 
such vision of curves and color as is afforded in 
the Champs Ely sees of Paris; but when one 
comes to recognize the peculiar atmospheric 
effects in London, he will seek beauty in the 
atmosphere rather than in the landscape alone. 
*^Loci dulcedo nos attinet!'^ The sweetness of 
the place holds us! Nineteen centuries ago 
were these words chosen by a General Council 
as a motto for the coat of arms. William Ern- 
est Henley is the poet of the London atmos- 
phere. He has pictured it in every phase, and 
of the peculiarly transparent haze of pale gold 
that is one of its most alluring effects, he says; 



" For earth and sky and air 
Are golden everywhere. 
And golden with a gold so suave and fine 
The looking on it lifts the heart like wine. 
Trafalgar Square 

(The fountains volleying golden glaze) 
Gleams like an angel-market." 



Dominated by its noble monument to Nelson, 
with its immense fountains and its circular 
marble walk, with the pillared fagade of the 
National Gallery occupying one side, the Strand 

13 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

and the multitudinous interests represented, — 
Trafalgar Square is a name to conjure with. 

London is one perpetual transformation scene. 
With a turn of the wind, with the rising of a 
cloud, sunny air is darkened by fast-falling tor- 
rents of rain, and electric lights at noonday 
gleam faintly through thick masses of mist and 
smoke. Even the huge buildings disappear, to 
appear in new shapes and in no shape at all; 
then, suddenly, the storm has passed, the sun- 
shine is fair, and life resumes its exhilaration. 

The lure of London, while a composite thing 
made up of impressive historical association; of 
reverence for its venerable Abbey and its old 
churches, few of which are not directly con- 
nected with some great event of the past; of its 
unrivalled privileges in notable scientific lec- 
tures and marvellous demonstrations of new 
and thrilling inventions; of exhibitions of noble 
art in numerous world-famous galleries open to 
all; of the extraordinary significance of its 
social life, might perhaps be almost expressed 
in one term — vitalism. For London prefigures 
itself before the gaze like a self-evolving uni- 
verse. It is not a city, the critical observer is 
ready to exclaim; it is a universe in itself. Be- 
cause of this, one must learn its laws and con- 
form to them. When the soaring traveler by 
air-ship shall succeed in alighting on Venus or 

14 




I 



a' 

C/2 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

Jupiter, he will not expect to live altogether by 
the habits he has acquired and found to answer 
very well upon the earth; on a new planet he 
will naturally expect to conform to the laws of 
that planet. In arriving in London, this same 
adjustment will be found most serviceable. 

London represents the perpetual struggle be- 
tween the higher and the lower idealisms. The 
followers of the higher are in perpetual and in- 
evitable conflict with the masses who are satis- 
fied with the lower. Each one has his own idea 
of a paradise or an inferno. But the upholders 
of constructive idealism continue to offer their 
plea for a nobler order of citizenship. The 
practical worker has his mystic visions, which 
lend to him effectiveness and power. His 
ambitions are both spiritual and temporal. 
They spring from a broad philosophy, they arise 
from a deep-rooted faith, they embody the 
symbolic vision; but they hold for their reali- 
zation the better housing of the poor; the rec- 
lamation of the dissolute and the immoral and 
the ignorant to honest endeavor and moral 
enlightenment and the illumination of education 
and thought. The new impulse of mankind to 
civic betterment is nowhere more in evidence 
than in London. Moi-ris and Ruskin have be- 
queathed their inheritance to competent suc- 
cessors. Bernard Shaw, with his half whimsical 

15 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

utterances, is wholly in earnest. Wells, the 
most idealistic of modern thinkers, has theories 
whose value will be discussed in later pages of 
this book. The spirit of the Academy of Plato, 
of the Lyceum of Aristotle, lives in London to- 
day. Each new epoch has its own spontaneous 
outgrowth of thought, its own poetry of feel- 
ing, its own moving music. But it manifests 
itself in new and unexpected, perhaps in un- 
comprehended groupings. For men are moved 
not by economic considerations, not by the 
pressure of immediate necessities, nor by the 
still more potent force of scholastic instruction; 
but by the force of ideals alone. What are the 
Acropolis of Athens, the Forum of Rome, the 
Louvre in Paris, or Westminster Abbey, with 
its profoundly impressive associations, but ex- 
pressions of the ideal in man? And the ideal 
forever haunting humanity is that of life in the 
spirit- world, "outside the limits of our space 
and time." Life becomes effective when one 
feels 

" The spiritual significance burn through 
The hieroglyphic of material shows." 

London, with her working-men's colleges, her 
vast and enthusiastic army of social workers, 
her religious influences, focusses this spiritual 
significance until its force is universally recog- 

16 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

nized. Thus is evolved the lure of London, not 
of one thing, but of many. One visitor will 
recognize one phase; a different aspect will 
especially appeal to another; but if the lure of 
London were placed under that mental spec- 
trum that reveals each separate strand, it would 
be found many-sided, many-colored, of varying 
and complex texture, but vital, magnetic, 
irresistible. 



17 



II 

HYDE PARK CORNER AND APSLEY HOUSE 

"To know the universe itself as a road — as many roads — all roads for 
travelling souls." — Walt Whitman. 

Is the lure of London largely due to the mag- 
netism generated by mere immensity? Is it 
to any degree due to that indefinable conta- 
gion of a crowd? To the masses of humanity 
that meet and mingle? The endless procession 
of life has certainly no more remarkable van- 
tage ground on this planet than that at Hyde 
Park Corner. Several features combine to pro- 
duce this result. In Knightsbridge, a little way 
above this famous corner, the two great thor- 
oughfares leading from Kensington and the 
Brompton Road into Piccadilly unite, pouring 
their traffic past Hyde Park; from Victoria, on 
the south, through Grosvenor Place, comes an 
unending stream, and through Park Lane is 
another steady procession from all the north; 
at the Marble Arch, the tide of travel from 
Oxford Street, from Edgware Road, and from 
Bayswater, all unite. Hyde Park Corner is 
thus the distributing center of all these numerous 

18 




3 

ai 
+-> 

3 



"2 
5 



o 






HYDE PARK CORNER — APSLEY HOUSE 

thoroughfares. Coming in from Kensington 
or Brompton, and desiring to go to Oxford 
Street, to Portman Square, onward to Hamp- 
stead or in the reverse directions, the passen- 
gers of motor-busses change here. In close 
proximity are two of the tube stations, one in 
Down Street, and one at the corner itself, and 
all this immensity of human activity is further 
augmented by the carriages and pedestrians 
passing in and out of Hyde Park. The colossal 
motor-busses fairly form a moving bridge along 
their courses, so closely do they follow each 
other; and the equipages of all orders and the 
throngs of pedestrians, equally diversified, con- 
tribute to a scene that is without parallel in any 
metropolis of the world. 

Hyde Park Corner is the pivotal center of the 
West End. It is the focus of wealth, fashion, 
culture, and social distinction. It is in as 
glaring contrast to the East End of London as 
if the two were on opposite sides of the planet. 
The endless procession is not only that of people, 
but to a great extent that of personalities, of ce- 
lebrities. The great houses of historic splendor 
seen around this point might serve as a palimp- 
sest to the student of English history. Apsley 
House, with its magnificent traditions, stands 
next to the residence of Baron Rothschild, and 
in the near distance, in Park Lane, is Dorches- 

19 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

ter House, an exquisite Italian palace set in the 
heart of London; Grosvenor House is near; 
Lansdowne House is adjacent in Berkeley 
Square; near the east end of Piccadilly is Devon- 
shire House, and still nearer stands the residence 
of the late Baroness Burdett-Coutts. In close 
proximity to that spacious mansion is the noted 
publishing house of John Murray, in Albemarle 
Street, which is more than a century old, and 
where each head of the house, in his respective 
day, has entertained the most noted literary 
men of the time. Almost within a step lived 
Faraday, also, when he occupied rooms in 
the Royal Institution. In Arlington Street, 
just off Piccadilly, lived Lady Mary Montague 
and in Berkeley Square were Pope and Horace 
Walpole. In all this region of Mayfair, and in 
Belgravia, at the south, are famous ducal 
houses, — mines of historic associations. In 
Kensington Road, at Kensington Gore, Lady 
Blessington lived for several years (1836-1849), 
creating one of the most brilliant salons of 
society, and her avowed aim, which she seems to 
have pursued with conspicuous success, was 
that of "bringing together people of the same 
pursuits ", among whom were Walter Savage 
Landor, Thackeray, Byron, Moore, Dickens, 
and Barry Cornwall; Disraeli is also included 
among the long and notable list of the habitues 

20 



HYDE PARK CORNER — APSLEY HOUSE 

of her house. The grounds then included three 
acres, where Hlacs bloomed, and it is also re- 
corded that nightingales sang in this Arcadia. 
Later this house became the home of William 
Wilberforce, the great liberator and distin- 
guished parliamentarian, whose statue stands 
in Parliament Square, and to whom there is also 
a monument in Westminster Abbey. Lady 
Ashburton, whose brilliant receptions have 
passed into social history, lived beyond the 
direct radius of Hyde Park Corner, in Bath 
House, Marylebone, where Carlyle, Barry Corn- 
wall, Tennyson, Browning, and indeed all the 
famous men of the day were to be met. Of her 
Carlyle said: "Lady Ashburton was the greatest 
lady I ever saw, with the soul of a princess and 
captainess, had there been any career for her 
but that of a fashionable one." Lord Lytton, 
better known to literature as "Owen Mere- 
dith", occupied at various times several houses 
in London, but his final and more permanent 
home was in Grosvenor Square, within easy dis- 
tance of Hyde Park Corner. Colley Cibber, 
whose exaltation to the Poet Laureateship was 
attended with more or less derision, lived in 
Berkeley Square, not distant from this corner, 
and the reader will recall Pope's caustic stanza 
regarding the national honor conferred upon 
Cibber: 

21 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

"In merry old England it once was a rule 

The King had his poet as well as his fool; 

But now we 're so frugal, — I 'd like you to know it. 

That Gibber can serve both for fool and for poet." 



When it is realized that of the seven million 
inhabitants of Greater London, a fair proportion 
of them are frequent passers-by at Hyde Park 
Corner, it is easy to see how wonderful is this 
point as a center of life. Yet to suppose for a 
moment that there is any trace of hilarity in the 
air is to reveal the depth and height and immen- 
sities of ignorance and of unfamiliarity with the 
rule of Britannica. Hyde Park, seen through 
the iron railings that surround it, is (occasionally) 
a brilliant and blooming spectacle, but that the 
atmosphere is, for the most part, as damp and 
chill as becomes a climate compact of rain and 
smoke; that the gray tones prevail; and that 
the unending file of motor-busses arrives and 
discharges their passengers with the severe so- 
lemnity of a procession of hearses, goes quite 
without saying. In Italy such throngs would be 
vociferous, and the air would be vocal with 
laughter and snatches of song. To compare 
Hyde Park, stately and majestic, with the 
Bois du \Boulogney with dewy glades and flower- 
gemmed alleys, that surprise the wanderer at 
every turn; to compare its appointed drives 
and equestrian paths and accommodations for 

22 



HYDE PARK CORNER — APSLEY HOUSE 

pedestrians; its admirable and discreet regula- 
tions to which no one would dream of running 
counter; to compare these with the spontaneous 
gaiety and freedom of spirit of the habitues in 
the Bois, the happy hunting-grounds of Paris, 
would be like attempting to trace analogies 
between the two great American cities which 
are unkindly said to represent the Quick and 
the Dead. The Parisian gaiety would appear 
quite indecorous in Hyde Park. 

The English take their pleasures seriously if 
not sadly. When they crave exhilarating ex- 
periences, they cross the Channel. London, in- 
deed, has more holidays (all of them appalling 
occasions) than even an Italian city, given over 
to festas and saints' days, can muster in its 
calendar; but the only ideal held of a holiday 
in London is to escape from it. The London 
holidays are marked by dreary miles of closed 
shutters, of deserted streets, of general gloom 
and darkness, with more or less frequent in- 
terludes of pouring torrents of rain. The ordi- 
nary London day can be supported with resig- 
nation, even if not at times with positive en- 
joyment; but a holiday is so appalling in its 
nature that only the bravest and most intrepid 
can contemplate it with fortitude. Every 
train, every motor-bus, every conceivable means 
of transportation outside its precincts, is 

23 



THE LURE. OF LONDON 

crowded to the utmost. To further aid and 
abet the escaping multitudes, the railroads 
lower their fares and offer every possible in- 
ducement to the general exodus. One can go 
to Paris and return, for less than the usual fare 
one way. Those to whose hearts the prospec- 
tive interval of pleasure strikes peculiar terror, 
board a steamer train and cross the Channel. 

Whether there has ever been left an eye- 
witness of a London holiday is not on record. 
Even the swiftly recurring week-end is like an 
impending stroke of doom. Promptly at one 
o'clock on Saturdays every shutter goes up, 
save those of the market-men and grocers, to 
whom this Dies Iroe occurs on Thursdays. 
On that afternoon, if you fare forth for a lemon, 
you may go far apace without success. Life 
in London has many alleviations, and might 
always be supported with some degree of equa- 
nimity, were it not for the custom of holidays. 
At Eastertide many of the places are closed 
from Holy Thursday until the following Tues- 
day. That day and Good Friday are of course 
held sacred; and it is hardly considered worth 
while to open the shops for a brief Saturday 
morning, when the afternoon holiday, Sunday, 
and the bank holiday of Monday are to 
follow. For five days London is enshrouded in 
gloom. 

24 



HYDE PARK CORNER — APSLEY HOUSE 

In Paris, on a holiday, the Champs Elysees 
are perpetually en fete. The groups of people 
on the seats under the embowering blossoms of 
the chestnut trees in spring; the beds of roses 
and of scarlet geraniums in vivid contrast with 
the emerald green of the turf; the silvery spray 
of fountains thrown on the air, and the little 
tables under the trees where ices and coffee 
and various refreshments are served, accentuate 
the enjoyment. The English, although so de- 
voted to sports and athletics, are not devoted 
to plein air, devoid of athletic inducements. 
They seek the open for activities rather than 
for social intercourse. As for such Arcadian 
pleasure hours as those in the Elysian Fields 
of Paris, with ices and music and the radiance of 
summer sunshine, or the colored fairyland of 
lights on summer evenings, which are the de- 
light of Parisians, one would no more look 
for them in London than for strawberries in a 
snowdrift. While the Parisians will congregate 
about tables on the pavement and call it all joy, 
the Londoners would only congregate about 
theirs on a private terrace, shielded from the 
vulgar gaze by impassable walls. 

The English of wealth and refinement are 
served by the most perfect of trained servitors, 
who offer the sumptuous repasts on the most 
exquisite of china with all stately and cere- 

25 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

monial observance, while the less fortunate 
classes take theirs in repulsive coffee-rooms, 
or in haunts less possible to mention in polite 
hearing. The English do not fare forth to 
Arcady. To them the idyllic aspects of life do 
not appeal. Climatic influences are an incalcu- 
lably potenti factor in national life. Darwin 
declared that "climate and the affections" 
were enough to make up life; and the effects 
on a people of living much in the open air, as in 
Italy and countries where nature smiles upon 
the land, is one that reacts on the character 
and is reflected in the habits of the populace. 
The fact that England has hardly four months 
out of the year that tempt one out into the open, 
makes, of itself, a distinction that can never 
be bridged between the English and the races 
of Latin Europe. Emerson observed that 
"Religion, the theatre, and the reading of the 
books of his country, all feed and increase the 
natural melancholy " of the Englishman. " They 
are proud and private," he adds; "and even 
if disposed to recreation will avoid an open 
garden." Their domesticity is too fixed to 
admit of any fraternal nomadism. This in- 
grained characteristic in the people determines 
the difference in the aspects of life as seen in 
the parks and recreation grounds of London 
and the continent. The camaraderie possible to 

26 




A Corner in Westminster Abbey 



HYDE PARK CORNER — APSLEY HOUSE 

people of different temperamental trend is not 
possible to the English. *' Every spirit builds 
itself a house," and the outer landscape is, in 
its last analysis, but the expression of the 
life of the people. If this be true, Hyde Park 
is, at all events, the reflection of a magnificent 
and impressive life. At the fashionable hours, 
it offers one of the most brilliant and stately 
panoramas and holds a supremacy unrivaled 
among municipal parks and pleasure grounds. 

The views from Hyde Park Corner, though 
over a perfectly level area, are full of delicate 
atmospheric changes, and when mists and fogs 
prevail, these views not infrequently resemble 
such stuff as dreams are made of. Across the 
Green Park, diagonally opposite Hyde Park, 
rise the picturesque towers of Westminster, 
with Buckingham Palace in the middle distance. 
The campanile of Westminster (Catholic) Cathe- 
dral, the lofty tower of Parliament and those 
of Westminster Abbey, are seen clearly outlined 
against the sky, or wraithlike, enwrapped in 
soft gray haze and shadowy fog. Gazing over 
this beautiful view, one cannot but recall a 
passage in a letter written by Lady Augusta 
Bruce to Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, later Dean 
of Westminster, shortly before their marriage. 
Lady Augusta was one of the ladies in waiting 
to the queen, between whom and herself there 

27 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

existed a close and warm friendship, and this 
letter was written from St. James Palace: 

"... Awakening at an unnaturally early 
hour I was startled by the picture presenting 
itself to my gaze. The sky was crimson, and 
against it, in the clear atmosphere of early morn- 
ing, the towers of Westminster and the whole 
group of those beautiful buildings stood out 
in the most perfect distinctness. It seemed as 
though not a detail of the architecture were 
lost, and yet, near and vivid as it was, there was 
something so mysterious and impressive and 
solemn in the silent beauty of the scene that it 
seemed more like a vision of the Holy City 
than anything earthly or material. I sat and 
watched it till the glowing light of the glorious 
dawn had melted into the light of day, and the 
vision had passed away. 

"Need I tell you, my beloved, with what 
thoughts and aspirations and earnest prayers 
my heart was filled, or how blessed were the 
moments I thus spent within sight of our home, 
on which may God our Father grant that a light 
more beautiful still, a halo more sacred and 
more holy, may rest for ever and ever. I can- 
not describe my thankfulness for the impression 
that has been left upon my mind. That one 
bright spot amid the surrounding darkness, 
and the nature of the light, so soft and mellow 
and diffusive, warming and gladdening and vivi- 
fying all around. So may your home be, my 
beloved, and may the peace and joy and affec- 
tion that reign there cheer and lighten the 

28 



HYDE PARK CORNER— APSLEY HOUSE 

hearts that are brought, in whatever degree, 
within its influence! 'And the city had no need 
of the sun, neither of the moon, to Hghten it, for 
the glory of God did hghten it, and the Lamb is 
the Hght thereof.'" 

In his reply to this letter from his fiancee, 
Stanley spoke of the comfort her "beautiful 
vision" had given him, and he said: "Let us 
hope that your glimpse of the Abbey may be a 
type of that which is to be." 

The deanery, in which the Dean of West- 
minster always lives, is connected with the Ab- 
bey and is, in fact, entered through the west 
cloisters; it was this future home, in which 
they were to be domiciled after their marriage, 
to which Lady Augusta refers. 

Buckingham Palace, seen in the middle 
distance between Hyde Park Corner and the 
historic group of buildings at Westminster, is 
now so transformed by its new fagade of white 
stone as to be impressive and beautiful rather 
than grim and dull as before. The imposing 
memorial group of sculpture to Queen Victoria, 
placed in front of the palace, is discernible 
from this vantage point, and diagonally oppo- 
site is the Corinthian Arch, forming the en- 
trance to the Green Park. Formerly, this arch 
stood almost in front of Apsley House, but in 

29 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

1828, when the colossal equestrian statue of 
the Duke of Wellington was removed from this 
place to Aldershot, the arch was changed to its 
present position. This is the statue to which 
Thackeray referred as a "hideous equestrian 
monster." The present memorial to the Duke 
that replaces it is the work of Boehm, who 
embellished the base with four figures repre- 
senting a grenadier, a Highlander, a Welsh 
fusilier, and an Inniskillen dragoon. This 
group was erected in 1846 by popular subscrip- 
tion. Across the street is the huge architec- 
tural pile of St. George's Hospital, on the site 
of which, before the building of Belgravia, 
when the region was considered to be quite 
in the country, the residence of Lord Lanes- 
borough stood. All the region now known as 
Belgravia belonged originally to the Davies 
family and passed into the possession of the 
Grosvenors on the marriage of Mary Davies with 
Lord Grosvenor. When Buckingham Palace 
became the property of the Crown, George III 
desired to add to it all the estate of Lord Gros- 
venor, but the Premier of that epoch would 
not sanction the expenditure of twenty thousand 
pounds for that purpose, while now as many 
millions could hardly purchase it. The king 
foresaw that land so adjacent to the royal es- 
tates would become eminently fashionable as 

30 



HYDE PARK CORNER — APSLEY HOUSE 

a residential region, and his foresight is amply 
fulfilled; for Belgravia is the most expensive 
(and one might add the most uninteresting) 
part of London. In Belgrave Place, however, 
George Grote, the celebrated historian of Greece, 
had his home, and many of the great ducal 
houses are here. The architecture is too mo- 
notonous to be impressive, although the vast 
size of the buildings gives to the locality a 
certain distinction. In Eaton Place is St. 
Peter's church, celebrated as the scene of great 
weddings in fashionable life, and also having 
a well-earned reputation for the fine quality of 
its music. 

Apsley House, commanding the entire out- 
look over Hyde Park, has the twofold interest 
of historic associations and a treasure-house 
of relics of international value. The large col- 
lection of gifts made to the "Iron Duke" grows 
more valuable with time and invests the house 
with the attraction of an historic museum. 
Built in 1785 for Lord Apsley, it was purchased 
in 1820 by the British nation to present to Arthur 
Wellesley, first Duke of Wellington, as a par- 
tial reward for his distinguished services. The 
present pillared fagade of stone was added some 
years later. In Apsley House one large room 
is given over exclusively to the gifts presented 
to the Duke and Field-marshal of England. 

31 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

This room is practically a museum, and in 
numerous glass cases are displayed the various 
costly offerings, among which are silver salvers 
and candelabra presented by the Spanish and 
Portuguese courts after the close of the Penin- 
sular War; a superb shield from the merchants 
and bankers of London, decorated in relief 
with scenes from the victories of the duke; a 
magnificent service of Royal Worcester and 
another of Sevres, the united gift of the Russian 
and French courts; many valuable orders, one 
being of the now extinct order of Saint Esprit; 
swords and batons set with jewels, and a dinner 
set presented by Queen Caroline to the Duke of 
Marlborough and by him given to the Duke of 
Wellington; the field-glasses used by the duke 
on the battle-field, and the cloak that he wore 
at Waterloo. 

A statue of Napoleon, heroic size, represent- 
ing him as standing, holding in one hand a 
globe on which is perched a figure of Victory, 
and which was presented by the Prince Regent 
in 1817, stands at the foot of the grand marble 
staircase. Other sculpture about the house in- 
clude a bust of Sir Walter Scott by Chantrey; 
a bronze bust of Bliicher, and a bust of Marshal 
Soult who, when ambassador in London, was 
entertained in Apsley House by the duke. 
The Piccadilly drawing-room has many paint- 




u 



03 



HYDE PARK CORNER — APSLEY HOUSE 

ings, — by Teniers, Wilkie, Landseer, and others, 
and a portrait of Napoleon engaged in studying 
a map. The famous Waterloo Gallery is the 
most interesting room in the house, with its 
six windows looking out into Hyde Park; 
it contains many valuable paintings, including 
one of Correggio's, "Christ on the Mount of 
Olives", a replica of Van Dyck's portrait of 
Charles I, the original of which is in Windsor 
Castle, and several gems of Italian art of an 
early period. It was in this room that the 
annual banquet, on every eighteenth of June, 
was held during the lifetime of the duke. The 
stately beauty of the view over the park im- 
presses every visitor to the Waterloo Chamber. 
The lovely drive along the banks of the Ser- 
pentine, the brilliant masses of color of the 
great plots of rhododendrons in June, and a suc- 
cession of flowering shrubs and of flowers all 
during the season, lend their charm to a view 
that in summer is a perfect sea of color and 
bloom. Near the Serpentine are many of the 
oldest trees of the park, some of these having 
been planted by Charles II. The waters of 
the Serpentine cover an area of fifty acres, and 
the lake is entirely formed from natural ponds 
and brooks. Rotten Row (whose name is sup- 
posed to have come from route de roi, as this 
was the old road from Whitehall to the royal 

33 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

hunting-grounds) is lined with chairs, a penny 
each, and few of these are vacant on a fine 
morning when the riders are out on the mile 
and a half length of their road. The fashionable 
promenade is thronged in the season at the 
regular hours, and the beauty of the scene at 
the hours for driving renders it one of the great 
spectacles of the world. The splendid equi- 
pages; the throng of charmingly dressed women, 
both in carriages and on the promenade; the 
countless beds of flowers in riotous bloom, and 
the groups of children at play make up a diver- 
sified panorama. No one really knows the pos- 
sible loveliness of the drive from Cumberland 
Gate, Marble Arch, on the Oxford Street side 
through the park to the corner of Piccadilly, 
until he has driven under these majestic trees 
in the late evening, with the stars gleaming 
through the foliage, and a summer moon turning 
the leaves to silver. 

Hyde Park took its name from the old manor 
of Hyde, which belonged to Westminster Abbey. 
The grounds were laid out as a park in the time 
of Henry VIII, and deer and stag were both 
hunted here in the Elizabethan reign. The 
Abbey still receives its supply of water from the 
Serpentine, according to the grant made by 
Edward the Confessor. A tragic reminiscence 
clings about the Serpentine, as the water in 

34 



HYDE PARK CORNER — APSLEY HOUSE 

which Harriet Westbrook, the first wife of 
Shelley, drowned herself in a mood of jealous 
passion. In the entrance at Hyde Park Corner 
a beautiful screen of open ironwork attracts the 
eye. It was designed in 1828 by Decimous 
Burton. The statue of Achilles placed near is 
hardly calculated to enhance the fame of plastic 
art, and had the Greek hero been confronted 
with this representation of himself, his feats of 
flying the plain would be entirely accounted for. 
Nothing in all the chain of these parks, the 
Green, Hyde, and Kensington Gardens, is 
more attractive to the saunterer than the Broad 
Walk, leading from Kensington Gore to Bays- 
water; and in the vicinity of Cumberland Gate 
are the especial happy hunting-grounds of the 
numberless "demonstrations" that flock to 
Hyde Park. All manner of orators with infal- 
lible theories for the transformation of humanity ; 
all self-called interpreters of the divine decrees, 
and all the "agitators" whose initial scheme for 
the reorganization of the universe is to throw 
all existing laws and traditions into chaotic 
ruin, find here their earthly paradise. The man 
who proposes to overthrow the British Empire 
before sunset is permitted his standing-ground, 
and his sympathizers in this laudable scheme 
are allowed to listen, provided they do not dis- 
turb the peace and the place of those who expect 

35 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

to still continue under the rule of Britannica. 
An American observer has noted the instance of 
the man who proposes to remove the king 
from the neighboring palace without loss of time 
or ceremony, or benefit of clergy, and has de- 
scribed the humorous, but effective treatment 
of the London police. If the remover of the 
king gets in the way of the drivers or prome- 
naders, the policeman says tp him, according 
to this observer: 

"Old 'un, you can do away with all private 
property and remove the king just as well a little 
farther on. Step up lively, now, and don't 
block the traffic." 

The London policeman is said never to lose 
his head or his temper; he is the most ingenious 
and skillful of tacticians, and has at his finger- 
tips a diplomacy that an embassy might well 
envy. The silent raising of his hand con- 
trols a nation's commerce. In all the myriad 
harangues in Hyde Park for the lofty purposes of 
protesting against royalty, the peerage, wealth, 
achievement, success of any sort, this moni- 
tor of the law interferes only when it becomes 
necessary to the conduct of order, and within 
these bounds the speakers have ample oppor- 
tunity to abolish (in word) the entire British 
dominion, and the universe of which it is not, 
it must be confessed, an unimportant part. 

36 



HYDE PARK CORNER— APSLEY HOUSE 

The suffragettes vary their pilgrimages to Down- 
ing Street and ParHament Square and their 
diversions of destroying priceless works of 
art in national galleries and burning historic 
castles, by improvised convocations in Hyde 
Park; but so long as they refrain from apply- 
ing their hatchets to the passers-by and from 
throwing bombs into motor-cars, they are per- 
mitted to voice their grievances. 

The political enfranchisement of women as 
led by the able and scholarly Mrs. Fawcett of 
England, was a measure that not only com- 
manded universal respect, even from its oppo- 
nents, but which had a most encouraging sup- 
port, both in numbers and in the quality of its 
adherents. Mrs. Fawcett belongs to the same 
exalted order of womanhood that is so admirably 
represented in our own country by notable 
leaders of the woman suffrage movement. 

Meetings of all descriptions are frequent in 
Hyde Park, as are also open-air religious meet- 
ings for the announcement of almost every 
order of opinion and argument. These are 
largely a feature of Sunday afternoons, near 
the Oxford Street side, where the passer-by may 
catch fragments of more extraordinary theories 
regarding the general nature and destiny of 
human life than had heretofore ever been 
dreamed of in his philosophy. 

37 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

On a Saturday early in the April of 1914, a 
general meeting was called in the park to dis- 
cuss the Ulster problems at the crisis precipi- 
tated by the action of the army, and the couy 
apprehended (and in a day or two more carried 
out) by the Premier in assuming the office of 
the Secretary of War. Tremendous crowds 
gathered, and a vast number of stands were 
erected from which eminent speakers, of a 
class, it must be said, who were never accus- 
tomed to address the masses in Hyde Park, 
were announced to give their views; but the 
order that prevailed in the immense spaces 
of the grounds, with one of the largest throngs 
ever assembled there, might have graced a May- 
fair drawing-room. 

Sir Edward Carson, Austen Chamberlain, the 
Marquis of Londonderry, Lord Charles Beres- 
ford, and Lord Robert Cecil, K. C, M. P., were 
among the speakers, — an innovation of dis- 
tinguished leaders appearing in Hyde Park to 
address the populace that was almost if not 
entirely without precedent in English history. 
No one of these could be regarded as lenient in 
his charges against the British government. 
Mr. Chamberlain thrilled his hearers by his 
forcible arraignment, declaring that the con- 
vocation had been called "to protest against 
the perpetuation of a great crime", and he 

38 



HYDE PARK CORNER— APSLEY HOUSE 

added with indignant sarcasm that "during the 
past week they had seen a Lord Chancellor 
keeper of the king's conscience ", and had wit- 
nessed the spectacle of the Chancellor's "falsi- 
fying the Parliamentary records" because some 
members had changed their minds ! 

This great assemblage in Hyde Park and the 
stirring speeches delivered from forty separate 
stands was the first gun, so to speak, in the 
passionate protest against any attempt to use 
the army to coerce the men of Ulster out of 
their full citizenship in the United Kingdom. 
It was hurled at the crowds that this was an 
attempt to coerce Ulster to obey an alien au- 
thority that she detested and had abundant 
reason to detest. If the men of Ulster were 
Greeks, Armenians, Turks, or Poles, insisted 
Mr. Chamberlain, the Liberals would inundate 
them with sympathy. He declared that he 
knew no crime in the history of the world to 
equal this; that it was prompted by cowardice, 
enforced by cruelty, and entered upon by cal- 
lousness of feeling totally unprecedented. 

Felix Cassel, K. C, M. P., the chairman of 
the platform from which Lord Londonderry 
spoke, reminded the crowd that more than a 
century ago the great Lord Castlereagh, an 
ancestor of the present speaker, contributed 
materially toward the passage of the Act of 

39 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

Union between Great Britain and Ireland, 
and that Londonderry's defense of this union 
was most fitting. The Marquis employed his 
well-known agility with the English tongue 
in quite the opposite effect to that recommended 
by Talleyrand, and characterized in no compli- 
mentary terms the proposals of the government. 
Lord Beresford left little to the imagination re- 
garding his own convictions, and charged the 
government, in no uncertain terms, with hav- 
ing *' concocted a most infamous and cowardly 
plot." Lord Cecil, from a neighboring plat- 
form, was not less vigorous in the language of 
denunciation. He declared that "Mr. Churchill 
was prepared to send fire and sword through 
Ulster," and he inquired that if this did not 
mean "the slaughter of hundreds and thou- 
sands of his fellow-subjects," then what did it 
mean.^ 

Henry James, whose love for his London is 
only rivaled by London's adoration of this 
interpreter of all her moods and tenses, does 
not include Hyde Park Corner among his 
personal and private gods. "It is doubtless 
a signal proof of being a London-lover quand 
meme that one should undertake an apology 
for so bungled an attempt at a great public 
place as Hyde Park Corner," he says. "It 
is certain that the improvements and embellish- 

40 



HYDE PARK CORNER — APSLEY HOUSE 

ments recently enacted there have only served 
to call further attention to the poverty of the 
elements and to the fact that this poverty is 
terribly illustrative of general conditions." Mr. 
James adds: 

*' The place is the beating heart of the great 
West End, yet its main features are a shabby, 
stuccoed hospital, the low park-gates, in their 
neat but unimposing frame, the drawing-room 
windows of Apsley House and of the common- 
place frontages on the little terrace beside it; 
to which must be added, of course, the only 
item in the whole prospect that is the least 
monumental — the arch spanning the private 
road beside the gardens of Buckingham Palace. 
There is a fine view of Piccadilly and Knights- 
bridge, and of the noble mansions, as the house- 
agents call them, of Grosvenor Place, together 
with a sense of generous space beyond the 
vulgar little railing of the Green Park; but, 
except the impression that there would be room 
for something better, there is nothing in all this 
that speaks to the imagination ; almost as much 
as the grimy desert of Trafalgar Square the 
prospect conveys the idea of an opportunity 
wasted." 

This impression of Hyde Park Corner was 
that of many years ago, and even Mr. James 
would now undoubtedly revise it to something 
more favorable; for within the past decade 
many details have been much improved. The 

41 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

architectural surroundings of this illustrious 
corner will be improved, if the project to do 
away with St. George's Hospital and to erect 
on its site an hotel of the most sumptuous 
order, is carried out. Hamilton Place and Park 
Lane unite to confer distinction on Hyde Park 
Corner. 

Is the color and romance of London concen- 
trated in Park Lane? The very name is 
the synonym of luxury, fashion, and of all the 
elaborate splendor of life that makes the great 
world of society. The thoroughfare itself 
is unique. With the green expanse of Hyde 
Park and the far-away vista of Kensington 
Gardens, beyond which the sun sinks in a soft 
haze, on the one side, and these splendid man- 
sions on the other, facing the grand old trees 
and the emerald turf of the vast pleasure ground, 
the location is incomparable for scenic beauty. 
Dorchester House easily holds the palm for 
architectural art, not only in Park Lane, but 
in all London. This Italian palace is entirely 
distinct from any of the stately homes of Eng- 
land. It is isolated in its own grandeur. It 
is unapproached in the splendor of its appoint- 
ments. The center of the house is occupied by 
the grand staircase which, as in the Roman 
palaces, is the chief feature. The state drawing- 
room, the green, and the red drawing-rooms, 

4S 



HYDE PARK CORNER — APSLEY HOUSE 

the salon, all open into each other, offering 
the most entrancing vista. The magnificently 
carved marble mantels, with ideal figures in 
the flowing lines of Michelangelo; the mantel 
of Bardeglia marble with the caryatides in 
Carrara; the dining-room, with its sky-blue 
ceiling decorated only with a flight of birds and 
with the sideboard carrying out the design of 
the mantel, with its eight immense mirrors, 
and its decorative scheme completed under 
the superintendence of Sir Coutts Lindsay, — 
all these apartments, flooded with light from 
the open park, have an atmospheric charm 
that is indescribable. The library contains the 
superb collections made by Lord Vernon, the 
celebrated Dante scholar, and beside the books 
that are priceless, many of them being rare 
editions, and other treasures of the bibliophile, 
there is a mass of manuscripts, from the ninth 
to the sixteenth century, bound in vellum 
and gold, which are kept in locked cases. In 
the entrance hall one is greeted by reliefs 
from Lucca della Robbia. In the salon hangs 
the portrait of the Marchesa Balbi by Van 
Dyck, with its glow of tone. Near it is that 
of Philip IV by Velasquez. There are works 
by Titian, Tintoretto, Ruysdael, Rembrandt, 
and to each picture is assigned perfect space 
and place. The immensity of the rooms offers 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

the finest facilities for the disposition of paint- 
ings and sculpture. 

At the corner of Park Lane and Hamilton 
Place, in the house formerly occupied by Lord 
Elgin (of *' Elgin Marbles" fame), is the present 
residence of the Duke and Duchess of Cam- 
bridge, and a little way down Park Lane is the 
Lady Brassey Museum, containing an interest- 
ing collection of antiquities, corals, and curios 
of all kinds, collected by Lady Brassey in her 
numerous voyages on the Sunbeam. The build- 
ing is unique with its Indian decorations, the 
Hindoo carvings being especially fine. The 
room on the first floor was originally the Durbar 
Hall of the Colonial and Indian Exhibition in 
London some years ago; and it has a marvellous 
array of Oriental arms, armor, rare carvings, 
inlaid work, and embroideries, together with an 
ethnological collection from Borneo, Burmah, 
the Straits of Malacca, Cyprus, Egypt, South 
America, and the Balkan regions. There are 
also some eighty or ninety volumes of photo- 
graphs taken in all these countries. 

"Palaces! pictures! parks!" exclaimed Haw- 
thorne, on visiting London. "They do enrich 
life, and kings and aristocrats cannot keep these 
things to themselves; they merely take care of 
them for others." 

In no metropolis of the world can there be 

44 



HYDE PARK CORNER — APSLEY HOUSE 

found a greater number of more beautiful 
houses, enriched by fine pictures and sculpture 
and rare books and folios, and graced by a 
delightful and gracious hospitality, than in 
London. It is this preeminently agreeable and 
cultivated society which is the real lure of 
London, and which is the irresistible attraction 
for Americans. 

It is like turning the pages of a literary en- 
cyclopedia to read the records of London days 
as noted by eminent visitors from the time 
of Professor George Ticknor, Motley, Emer- 
son, and Hawthorne, to the more modern 
chronicles of Doctor Holmes (in that wonderful 
"Hundred Days"), of Charles Eliot Norton, 
Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Phillips 
Brooks, Mrs. Louise Chandler Moulton, and 
others of a still later day. In the early years of 
the eighties, James Russell Lowell was the 
American Minister (before the establishment of 
our embassy) and Matthew Arnold, Ruskin, 
Huxley, Lord Leighton, Canon Farrar, Tenny- 
son, Browning, the Baroness Burdett-Coutts, 
Jean Ingelow, Newman Hall, Gladstone, and 
others of that notable age were all living. 
What brilliant groups there were into which the 
favored visitor entered ! 

There are attractions far less calculated to 
lend themselves to literary annals which the 

45 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

observer of to-day may discern as a lure of 
London to the American woman. With her 
bank account in the stately and decorous pre- 
cincts of Brown and Shipley in Pall Mall, her 
motor taxi, and her impassioned joy in buy- 
ing things, which of the fabled seven floors of 
paradise could vie with London in her regard? 
Her existence is more gorgeous than royalty; 
it is a triumphant procession, as it were, among 
the marble pillars and the lofty palms of the 
shopping emporiums, that supply pins and 
pianos, hosiery or house-boats, tape or tapes- 
try, diamond-heeled slippers and robes that 
would make the Queen of Sheba pause and re- 
flect. The wizard, the accomplished magician 
of all this dream of splendor, further extracts 
the last dollar of her cherished bank deposit 
when she is thrilled with the labels, ^^Nou- 
veaute de Paris!" The cup of feminine felicity 
is full and running over. In this world the 
American woman wanders like Alice in Wonder- 
land. She may ascend to the roof -garden and 
enjoy the view and an ice; she may converse 
with her legion of friends through a special 
telephone within a radius almost anywhere 
short of the other side of the Atlantic. She may 
"call up" an agent and purchase a house in 
May fair, or a "baronial castle", as the people 
in Jane Austen's novels would respectfully 

46 



HYDE PARK CORNER — APSLEY HOUSE 

designate it, if she has the traditional American 
fortune. All these inestimable privileges are 
widely open to her as she emerges from her 
club, or that of her husband. 

To judge by the London press. Society is a 
recognized featureof the contemporary activities, 
and the various entertainments, balls, dinners, 
musicales, receptions, and garden-parties are an- 
nounced in the press each morning, and some- 
times three weeks in advance of their date. 
Society in its best sense is the highest expres- 
sion of humanity, and is considered as entitled 
to deliberate consideration. 

Nowhere is the human adventure more richly 
rewarded than in London, and life itself is not 
so dull an affair that its scenes and actors do 
not infrequently unroll themselves as if at 
the touch of a magician. One in quest of the 
aesthetic grouping alone might go farther and 
fare worse than in Hyde Park. Under the majes- 
tic trees on a June afternoon, the changing 
groups and throngs make moving pictures rival- 
ing those that draw perpetual crowds at the 
vaudeville. The aesthetic' and the human 
adventure mingle and impress their image 
upon the camera obscura of the soul, in all 
their myriad reflections of the comedie humaine. 
Nor can the loiterer in Hyde Park fail to call 
up spirits from the vasty deep of the mighty 

47 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

Past; to be haunted by those immortals who 
have long since trodden these paths and gone 
their appointed way, desiring, with Homer, 
"their own soul's life and their comrades' home- 
coming.'* 



48 



m 

THE ROYAL INSTITUTION OF GREAT BRITAIN 

"... knowledge moulds the world anew 
And scatters far and wide the seeds 
Of other hopes and other creeds; 
And all in vain we seek to trace 
The fortunes of the coming race. 
Some with fear and some with hope — 
None can cast its horoscope. 
And dim shapeless figures loom 
All around us; . . . 
Forces that may rise and reign 
As the old ideals wane." 

William Edward Habtpole Leckt. 

The Royal Institution in Albemarle Street is a 
center of scientific activity invested with the 
somewhat unusual addition of a social prestige 
that attracts fashionable as well as learned 
throngs to such of its deliberations as may be 
open to a more general audience. At the Friday 
evening meetings, where only members and 
invited guests are present, the scene rivals any 
Mayfair drawing-room in its brilliancy. The 
groups of eminent men and fashionably gowned 
women transform the stately, spacious, splendid 
library in which they are received into a veri- 
table salon; and Albemarle Street from nine 
o'clock, for which hour the invitations are issued, 

49 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

is a sea of motor-cars discharging their occu- 
pants at the entrance of the pillared front of the 
Institution. The laboratories are all thrown 
open, and women in full dress bending over some 
scientific mechanism, or watching with unfeigned 
and with intelligent interest some delicate ex- 
periment in physics, surrounded by men whose 
names are an authority throughout the realm 
of scholarship, make up a brilliant and unique 
scene. After a social hour the company all 
adjourn to the lecture room arranged as an 
amphitheatre, the rather steep incline of seats 
ascending row after row to the balcony. On 
these occasions the lecture, delivered by a man 
of some special claim to distinction, is always 
on some new and notable discovery, some re- 
cent development of speculative science of a 
nature to command attention, or some new 
aspect of a social, artistic, literary, or scientific 
problem. Whenever the nature of the subject 
admits, the Friday evening lecture is illustrated 
by the stereopticon or by experimental proc- 
esses. Near the lecturer sits the President of 
the Royal Institution (now the Duke of North- 
umberland), and by his side are apt to be one 
or more of the three honorary members, the 
Duke of Connaught, Prince Christian of Schles- 
wig-Holstein, and Albert I, Prince of Monaco; 
or the Honorary Professor of Natural Philos- 

50 




Statue of diaries Darwin by lioehm 

South Kensington Museum 



THE ROYAL INSTITUTION 

ophy, the Right Honorable Lord Rayleigh, 
with a trail of learned titles after his name; 
the treasurer, Sir James Crichton-Browne, the 
secretary, Alexander Siemens, with many de- 
grees, while members of the royal family, or 
household, and eminent visitors from all parts 
of the world are frequently seen. 

The Royal Institution of Great Britain was 
founded in 1799; for more than a century it has 
been the scene of activities which have focused 
the attention of the scientific world. The im- 
mense growth of all commercial and industrial 
life, which the expansion and development of 
science has produced, is largely indebted to the 
work done here. Vast chemical industries 
have been based on discoveries made in these 
laboratories. It is here that Faraday made 
those numerous and epoch-making discoveries 
which are the basis of the infinite forms of ap- 
plied electricity that transformed the modern 
world. The successive generations of dis- 
tinguished men who have been the directive 
power of this Institution are contributors of 
incalculable value to the civilization of the 
present day. Domestic comfort and national 
wealth owe a debt to the researches made here 
that can hardly be computed. Yet, by an 
anomaly, the Royal Institution is not itself 
rich, and has never had a State endowment. 

51 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

Its income is derived from membership subscrip- 
tions, and from bequests and contributions 
made by persons who appreciate the greatness 
and importance of its work. The members of 
this body have not only the reward of their 
personal participation in important and inter- 
esting activities, however, but to all who live 
within access to London, the large and delight- 
fully furnished rooms of the Institution, with 
the vast supply of current papers, journals, and 
magazines, and the charm of sculpture and 
pictures; the rich resources of the library of over 
seventy thousand volumes, principally of scien- 
tific works but containing a proportion of general 
literature and including many rare works not 
easily found elsewhere; with every facility for 
reading, study, and correspondence; the privi- 
lege of enjoying the social gathering on Friday 
evenings, — all these offer varied incitements to 
membership enrollment. The secretary of the 
Institution, speaking of these many induce- 
ments to membership says: 

" Members obtain what clubs do not offer — 
a social gathering every Friday evening during 
the session of members and their friends of 
both sexes. There is a lecture of an hour's 
duration upon some topic of the day, perhaps 
some novel research in some branch of science; 
perhaps the most recent archaeological dis- 

52 



THE ROYAL INSTITUTION 

coveries in some old Greek colony; perhaps the 
newest exploration of some little-known por- 
tion of the globe; perhaps a new inquiry into the 
life and works of some eminent author; or per- 
haps the last word upon the causation of some 
devasting malady. These lectures are illus- 
trated by experiments or lantern slides, accord- 
ing to the nature of the subject. When the lec- 
ture is over the audience can saunter through 
the wide libraries, in which there is always to 
be found an exhibition of the latest products 
of invention or ingenuity in some department 
or other, keeping the spectators abreast of what 
is going on in the world." 

The library contains also many rare and 
highly important manuscripts, among which 
are the Coulter or Dorchester papers; the head- 
quarters documents of successive British com- 
manders-in-chief, of the American War of In- 
dependence, and much of the correspondence 
of that period. 

The typical scope and purposes of the lecture 
courses of the Royal Institution are indicated 
by the courses given during this present year of 
1914, when such a specialist as Professor Sir 
Joseph John Thomson discusses the advance 
in physical science; the Right Honorable Lord 
Rayleigh speaks on fluid motions; Doctor Wil- 
liam McDougall, Fellow of Corpus Christi, Ox- 
ford, on the intellectual, moral, and religious life 

53 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

of savage man; Professor Sir Thomas Holland 
on the causes of earth crust folds; Professor 
Jenkin, of the Oxford Chair of Engineering 
Science, on theories of caloric; Arthur H. Smith, 
Keeper of Greek and Roman Antiquities of the 
British Museum, on early and later Greece and 
Rome; the great authority on eugenics, Caleb 
Williams Saleeby, on the progress of this 
science with its powers and its problems. The 
phenomena of the electric emissivity of matter 
is explained by John Allen Harked of the na- 
tional physical laboratory; Professor Gollancz, 
Litt. D., of King's College, lectures on Hamlet 
in legend and drama; and William Bateson, of 
the Fulleran Chair of Physiology in the Royal 
Institution, discourses on animals and plants 
under domestication, while Frederick C order, of 
the Royal Academy of Music, speaks of cer- 
tain neglected but important musical compos- 
ers, among whom he instances Ludwig Spohr, 
Joachim Raff, and Henry Bishop. Also Pro- 
fessor Fleming gave an enthralling lecture on the 
recent improvements in long-distance telephony, 
with ample illustrations, to one of the most 
eager and attentive of audiences; Sir Walter 
Lawrence discoursed on an Indian State; Pro- 
fessor Arthur Keith, the well-known anthropol- 
ogist, spoke of the busts and portraits of Shake- 
speare and of Burns; Professor Norman Collie 

54 



THE ROYAL INSTITUTION 

illustrated the production of neon and helium 
by electric discharge, and Professor Sir James 
Dewar took for his subject the coming of age 
of the "vacuum flask.'* The author of the book 
entitled "The Hapsburg Monarchy", H. Wick- 
ham Steed, was secured to lecture on the foun- 
dations of diplomacy, and the Astronomer 
Royal, Frank Watson Dyer, with half a page 
of learned titles trailing after his name, gave a 
fascinating address, illustrated by the stereop- 
ticon, on the stars around the north pole. 
From Calcutta came Jadadis Chunder Bose, 
who holds a chair in Presidency College in that 
city, to discuss the autographs of plants and 
their revelations, thus opening a chapter in 
nature little known and of the most mysterious 
attraction. Robert Mond, the antiquarian, there 
spoke on the mortuary chapels of the Theban 
nobles, and Professor Frederick Keeble gave a 
lecture on symbiosis of "plant animals," whose 
curious interest rivaled that of Professor Bose's 
subject. 

Monsignor Benson, the latter-day novelist of 
the Catholic faith, gave a brilliant address, the 
theme of which was a criticism of critics; and 
the Very Reverend William Ralph Inge, the 
present Dean of St. Paul's, gave a series of 
three deeply interesting lectures on Plotinus as 
philosopher, religious teacher, and mystic. The 

55 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

Director of the Nobel Institute of Physical 
Chemistry, Doctor Svante Arrhenius, addressed 
the large audiences that gathered to hear him 
on the identity of laws in both general and 
biological chemistry, while the memory of the 
great Faraday was revived in a vital manner 
by Professor Silvanus P. Thompson in his 
discussion of Faraday in connection with the 
foundations of electrical engineering. Nor was 
natural history in the classics ignored: from 
Dundee came Doctor D'Arcy W. Thompson, 
with his lectures on the natural history of the 
poets. Homer, Virgil, and Aristophanes, of 
Aristotle and Pliny; while celestial spectros- 
copy was presented by Professor Fowler of the 
Imperial College, with experimental demonstra- 
tions of the investigations of the spectra of the 
sun, stars, and comets. Doctor Walter Wahl 
revealed many of the problems of physical 
chemistry, explaining phenomena that occur 
in matter under high and under low temper- 
atures; the nature and origin of fiords, with 
their distribution and effects on the movements 
of the earth, was delightfully pictured by Pro- 
fessor John W. Gregory of Glasgow. Sigismund 
Goetze gave an insight into expression in art, 
giving its origin and tracing its development, 
and offering a critical view of the importance of 
right expression in modern conditions; while 

56 



THE ROYAL INSTITUTION 

the devotees of ornithology were gratified by a 
lecture on bird-migration by the specialist in 
anatomy, Professor Charles J. Patten, of Shef- 
field. This resume is fairly typical of every 
year's work at the Royal Institution, new 
specialists being invited from the world over, 
as they appear, to deliver their message before 
this cosmopolitan academy. 

Modern scientific research is a pursuit in- 
volving great expense from the necessity of 
costly apparatus and means to conduct experi- 
ments. It is said that no other foundation in 
the world, however fortunate in securing rich 
endowments, can show results that exceed 
those obtained at the Royal Institution. The 
lecture courses range over the fields of nearly 
all the inductive sciences: Mechanics, Chem- 
istry, Heat, Light, Electricity, Astronomy, Geol- 
ogy, Biology, and not infrequently include 
courses on Literature and the Fine Arts. The 
reading rooms of the Institution are open every 
day in the week between nine in the morning 
and eleven at night, and the library hours are 
from ten a. m. till ten p. m., which accommodates 
readers to the utmost extent. To share in the 
privileges of the Royal Institution is to enter 
into a university of special training of the 
most valuable order, and one closely applied to 
all knowledge, and to the advancement and 

57 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

prosperity of all practical life. No visitor to 
London would dream of not familiarizing him- 
self, so far as may be, with that wonder of all 
ages, the British Museum. But comparatively 
few, outside the scientific cult, know much of 
the Royal Institution, or realize that its privi- 
leges may be extended to those who wish to 
attend the courses of lectures on the payment 
of a reasonable fee. One of the specified objects 
of the Institution, and an object held to be as 
definite as that of diffusing the principles of 
experimental science, is that of promoting 
social intercourse among the lovers of science, 
both men and women. The membership in- 
cludes women as well as men, and the oppor- 
tunities for collective as well as for individual 
study are especially valuable. 

The site of the Royal Institution is one of 
historic renown. In the middle of the seven- 
teenth century three great houses were in proc- 
ess of erection on the north of Piccadilly: 
Burlington House, Berkeley House, and the 
palace of Lord Chancellor Clarendon, who died 
in exile. The palace was sold to the Duke of 
Albemarle, whose talent for finance left much 
to be desired, and the property fell into the 
hands of a company of bankers and mechanics, 
who ultimately sold the land now occupied 
by Albemarle, Dover, and Bond streets. The 

5S 



THE ROYAL INSTITUTION 

latter has been celebrated by Lord Lytton in 
the lines: 

"Bond street enter, — 
Dear street, of London's charms the center. 

It is a curious fact that the founder of the Royal 
Institution, Benjamin Thompson, later Count 
Rumford, was born in the United States, near 
Boston, and at the age of seventeen was a clerk 
in one of the Boston shops, attending evening 
school to further his education. Becoming 
somewhat proficient in French, he went abroad, 
and at the age of twenty-three found himself 
in Mannheim, where he made some notable 
scientific experiments in the presence of Pro- 
fessor Hemmer of the Electoral Academy. 
In 1788 he was elected a member of the Royal 
Academy of Great Britain; he was knighted by 
George the Third, and when Sir Benjamin 
Thompson became the Lieutenant-general of the 
Bavarian armies, the order of the White Eagle 
was bestowed upon him, and he was made a 
Count of the Holy Roman Empire. Count 
Rumford's interest in science became the pre- 
dominant one of his life. From London, in July 
of 1796, he wrote to Honorable John Adams, 
the president at that time of the American Acad- 
emy of Arts and Sciences, in Boston, to offer 
five thousand dollars as a gift, the interest of 

59 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

which was to pay for a medal "to the author 
of the most important discovery or useful 
improvement on heat or light." During the 
succeeding two or three years, Count Rumford 
was occupied with plans for founding an organ- 
ization for "the speedy and general diffusion 
of knowledge and improvements, wherever orig- 
inated and of the application of science to the 
useful purposes of life." In March, 1779, a 
meeting was held at the home of Sir Joseph 
Banks, at which the plan for the Royal Institu- 
tion was fully organized. The Duke of Devon- 
shire, Lord Palmerston, Earl Holland, William 
Wilberforce, and Earl Spencer were among those 
present, and within the ensuing three months 
subscriptions of more than twenty thousand 
pounds had poured in to support the new proj- 
ect. The land was purchased in Albemarle 
Street; daily lectures on chemistry and physics 
were initiated, a chemical laboratory was con- 
structed, and men were engaged to prepare 
models and apparatus. Count Rumford wrote 
to his daughter that the Royal Institution was 
"not only the fashion but the rage", and that 
they had found "a nice, able man as a lecturer, 
— Humphry Davy." The initial lecture of 
this young man is said to have enchanted the 
listeners with its power, poetry, and philosophy. 
The second one drew crowds that overflowed 

60 



THE ROYAL INSTITUTION 

the hall, and a larger one had to be engaged 
at once. It was barely previous to these lectures 
that Davy had won much attention by dis- 
covering the ansesthetic properties of nitrous 
oxide, which was followed by other brilliant 
discoveries. In 1812 he was knighted: on the 
day following he married a lady of large for- 
tune and Sir Humphry's increasing prestige 
invested the Institution with splendor. "It 
was no longer a popular school of technical 
science, but became almost the exclusive prop- 
erty of the higher classes. Ladies of rank and 
young noblemen assiduously followed the lec- 
tures of Davy, while his researches in the labo- 
ratory produced the most solid results. It was 
there that he discovered the laws of electro- 
chemical decomposition, that he established the 
true nature of chlorine and the philosophy of 
flame." 

The Institution still preserves the battery 
by means of which Davy accomplished the 
separation of potassium and sodium. It was a 
great moment in his life when he saw the new 
element penetrate through the crust of potash 
and take fire the instant it came in contact with 
the air. "He could not contain his joy," de- 
scribes one chronicler, "and danced around the 
room in ecstatic transport." About this time 
another remarkable professor was appointed 

61 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

to the Chair of Natural Philosophy, the famous 
Doctor Young, who, at the age of fourteen, was 
a remarkable linguist, proficient in Persian, 
Arabic, and Hebrew, as well as in French and 
Italian, in Latin and Greek. Davy retired in 
1813, his chair being filled by William Thomas 
Brand. Before Sir Humphry Davy's retire- 
ment from his position, he had been impressed 
with the ability of a young bookbinder, Michael 
Faraday, to whom he had given the place of 
laboratory assistant. In 1825 Faraday was pro- 
moted to be the director of the laboratory, and 
two years later he was appointed to a chair, 
where his research and genius made a new epoch 
in the history of the Institution. It was left 
for his successor, Professor Tyndall, to do 
justice to the genius of Faraday, which he char- 
acterized as being of the prophetic order. Not 
far from the year of 1830, Faraday had pro- 
claimed his conviction of a single origin of all 
the varieties of force, in these words: "I have 
long held an opinion that the various forms 
under which the forces of matter are made 
manifest, have one common origin; are, indeed, 
so directly related and mutually dependent, 
that they are convertible, as it were, into one 
another, and possess equivalents of power in 
their action." This seems to have been the 
first unerring insight into the great law of cor- 

62 



I 




Reproduced by permission of the National Portrait Gallery 

Michael Faraday 

From a portrait by Thomas Phillips, R.A. National Portrait Gallery 



i 



THE ROYAL INSTITUTION 

relation of forces now so universally accepted. 
As Doctor Tyndall says: "Faraday was more 
than a philosopher, and often wrought by an 
inspiration to be understood by sympathy 
alone." Faraday's special field was the investi- 
gation into the relations and the properties 
of heat, light, magnetism, and electricity. He 
was offered the presidency of the Institution, 
but declined the honor, preferring to devote 
his time to actual work in his chosen field. 
Doctor Tyndall characterizes Faraday as a 

"... just and faithful knight of God," 

nor is this estimate one of undue exaltation. 

Invitations to lecture before the Institution 
were in those days, as now, regarded as a special 
honor. Campbell gave a lecture on poetry; 
Flaxman gave two on art, and was made an 
honorary member for life. Southey was invited 
to appear on this platform, but declined. Doc- 
tor Whewell gave an address on education. 
In a later day (1884), Sir Walter Besant lec- 
tured before the Institution on "The Art 
of Fiction", considering it justly as one of 
the Fine Arts. He claimed for it a place with 
sculpture, painting, music; and presented an 
able argument for its being regarded as subject 
to artistic laws of proportion, harmony, and 
perspective. He claimed for a master in the 

63 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

art of fiction the same preeminence that 
would be accorded the master in any other art. 
Sir Walter evidently held with Macaulay that 
writing is rather a question of the fullness of 
the mind than of the emptiness of the pocket; 
and that literature can hardly be relegated 
to a place among the industrial occupations. 

The Royal Institution has a number of oil 
portraits, busts, and portrait busts that are of 
great interest. A picture showing Newton sit- 
ting in a garden, in a meditative attitude, is 
one that holds the visitor; a medallion of Tyn- 
dall by Woolner, modeled in 1876, is considered 
the best existing portrait of that noble man; 
the splendid statue at the foot of the grand 
staircase of Faraday standing, life-size, is an 
impressive work of art; and there are portraits 
of Sir William Huggins, of Mrs. Somerville, of 
Sir Humphry Davy, and other distinguished 
scientists. 

The most brilliant feature of the Royal In- 
stitution for the spring of 1914 was a course of 
lectures by the celebrated professor who holds 
the Chair of Natural Philosophy, Sir Joseph 
John Thomson, on "Recent Discoveries in 
Physical Science", given on six successive Sat- 
urdays in March and April. This course was 
one of preeminent value, and in the research 

61 



THE ROYAL INSTITUTION 

made into the cause of gravitation incited much 
discussion in London and on the continent. 

A Friday evening lecture by Professor Thom- 
son discussing researches on Rontgen rays, il- 
lustrated by a most beautiful series of experi- 
ments, was given before a brilliant audience of 
members and their invited guests, the Duke of 
Northumberland in the presidential chair, while 
both royalty and nobility were represented in 
the audience. 

Sir Joseph Thomson accepted the Chair of 
Natural Philosophy in the Royal Institution 
in 1905, and his genius, his profound, brilliant, 
and wide learning, and his single-hearted devo- 
tion to science, of which electricity is his spe- 
cialty, render him particularly calculated to 
sustain and extend the great traditions of Far- 
aday, Tyndall, and Huxley. Professor Huxley's 
lectures were always thronged by attentive 
listeners, and a vivid picture of one of these 
occasions has been preserved by George W. 
Smalley, one of the most distinguished of in- 
ternational press correspondents. Mr. Smalley 
wrote : ^ 

"I used always to admire the simple and busi- 
ness-like way in which Huxley made his entry 
on great occasions. He hated anything like 
display and would have none of it. At the 

* "London Letters," New York: Harper and Brothers. 
65 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

Royal Institution, more than almost anywhere 
else, the lecturer, on whom the concentric circles 
of spectators in their steep amphitheatre look 
down, focusses the gaze. Huxley never seemed 
aware that anybody was looking at him. From 
self-consciousness he was, here as elsewhere, sin- 
gularly free, as from self-assertion. He walked 
in through the door on the left as if he were 
entering his own laboratory. In these days 
he bore scarcely a mark of age. He was in the 
full vigor of manhood and looked the man he 
was. Faultlessly dressed — the rule in the Royal 
Institution is evening costume — with a firm 
step and easy bearing he took his place appar- 
ently without a thought of the people who were 
cheering him. To him it was an anniversary. 
He looked and he probably was the master. 
Surrounded as he was by the celebrities of 
science and the ornaments of London drawing- 
rooms, there was none who had quite the same 
kind of intellectual ascendency that belonged 
to him. The square forehead, the square jaw, 
the tense lines of the mouth, the deep flashing 
dark eyes, the impression of something more 
than strength he gave you, an impression of 
sincerity, of solid force, of immovability, yet 
with the gentleness arising from the serene 
consciousness of his strength — all these be- 
longed to Huxley and to him alone. The first 
glance magnetized his audience. The eyes 
were those of one accustomed to command, of 
one having authority, and not fearing on occa- 
sion to use it. The hair swept carelessly away 
from the broad forehead and grew rather long 

66 



THE ROYAL INSTITUTION 

behind, yet the length did not suggest, as it 
often does, effeminacy. He was masculine in 
everything — look, gesture, speech. Sparing 
of gesture, sparing of emphasis, careless of 
mere rhetorical and of oratorical art, he had 
nevertheless the secret of the highest art of 
all, whether in oratory or whatever else — he 
had simplicity. The force was in the thought 
and the diction, and he needed no other. The 
voice was rather deep, low, but quite audible, 
at times sonorous, and always full. He used the 
chest-notes. His manner here, in the presence 
of this select and rather limited audience — 
for the theatre of the Royal Institution holds, 
I think, less than a thousand people — was 
exactly the same as before a great company 
whom he addressed as president of the British 
Association. I remember going late to that 
meeting ... it was at Liverpool . . . and hav- 
ing to sit far back, yet hearing every word easily, 
and there, too, the feeling was the same, that 
he had mastered his audience, taken possession 
of them, and held them to the end in an unre- 
laxing grip, as a great actor at his best does. 
There was nothing of the actor about him, 
except that he knew how to stand still, but mas- 
terful he ever was. ..." 

Renan, Buckle, and many other noted men of 
their time have been invited to appear on the 
platform of the Royal Institution. On one mem- 
orable evening in the August of 1886, Tennyson, 
who was then on his way to Norway, dined 

67 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

with the Tyndalls at the Royal Institution, 
— an evening that is cherished as a treasured 
tradition; for Lord Tennyson, not infelici- 
tously termed the "poet of science", is espe- 
cially characterized as one who combined with 
the feu sacre an ever-deepening interest in the 
final cause beyond all manifestations, and in the 
marvellous working out of the laws of nature. 

The Royal Society in London, which has its 
magnificent suite of rooms in Burlington House, 
Piccadilly, dates back to 1665, when it crystal- 
lized into an organization at a lecture given by 
Sir Christopher Wren ; but the interest in induc- 
tive philosophy, the raison d'etre of the Society, 
is directly traced to the influence and inspira- 
tion of Lord Bacon. In 1671 the Society was 
enriched by the power of Isaac Newton who 
became a Fellow, and whose lectures announc- 
ing his own views on the nature of light aroused 
a storm of opposition all over Europe. Newton 
was then a professor of mathematics at Cam- 
bridge, and he had already invented the re- 
flecting telescope. The actual instrument is 
now among the treasured possessions of the 
Society, as is the manuscript of the first book 
of Newton's immortal Philosophia Naturalisy 
Principia Mathematica, in Sir Isaac's own hand- 
writing. The history of the Royal Society is 
an illuminated page in scientific development. 

68 



THE ROYAL INSTITUTION 

In 1708, Sir Godfrey Copley, then the president, 
left a bequest of a hundred pounds, of which 
the interest was to be used to bestow a gold 
medal of five pounds in value, and this has 
remained the highest gift and honor that the 
Royal Society can bestow. The medal has been 
conferred on Franklin, Volta, Leibig, Herschel, 
Leverrier, and others. This Society has the 
honor of being the first to announce the com- 
position of water, a discovery attributed to Watt. 
In 1805, Sir Humphry Davy gave his paper 
on "Some Chemical Agencies" before the as- 
sembly and presented theories which made its 
reading the greatest scientific event of the day. 
The French Institute recognized its value and 
crowned Sir Humphry with honor; with char- 
acteristic enthusiasm and generous recognition, 
it also presented to him the sum of three thou- 
sand francs. It was not long after this that 
Sir Humphry invented the safety lamp, on 
which the Royal Society bestowed on him the 
Copley medal, and the colliers of England pre- 
sented him with a service of plate costing 
twenty-five hundred pounds. The British Gov- 
ernment gives the Royal Society its rooms in 
Burlington House, and the annual thousand 
pounds voted to be used in the encouragement 
of original research, while not at the direct dis- 
posal of the Society, is yet subject to its advice 

69 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

and controlling counsel. There are also pro- 
vided in Burlington House rooms for the So- 
ciety of Antiquaries, the Linnean Society, the 
Royal Astronomical, the Geological, and the 
Chemical societies. 

The suite occupied by the Royal Society is 
rich in portraits of distinguished members 
painted by Sir Peter Lely, Sir Thomas Law- 
rence, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and other cele- 
brated artists. One of the most valued works 
of Lawrence is a portrait of Copernicus, show- 
ing a face with an unmistakably ecclesiastical 
expression, clean-shaven, with a long upper lip 
and abnormally firm chin. It looks like the 
man who could write the world-famous trea- 
tise, "De Oribus Ccelestium Revolution{hus^\ 
and hold it unpublished till shortly before his 
death. Among other portraits are those of 
Edmund Halley (the discoverer of Halley's 
Comet), John Locke (the author of "Locke on 
the Understanding"), Hobbes, and John Evelyn. 
In the salon for meetings, over the president's 
chair, hangs a fine portrait of Sir Isaac New- 
ton, whose sun-dial, cut out of the wall of his 
father's house, is preserved in the library. 

Beside these organizations, scientific Lon- 
don includes the Royal Society of Arts, having 
its rooms in the Adelphi, which dates back to 
1754, and devotes itself to literature, to indus- 

70 



THE ROYAL INSTITUTION 

trial art, and to pure and applied sciences. 
Among its treasures are four plates etched by- 
Albert Diirer, of which impressions are placed 
in the keeping of the British Museum. Sir 
Charles Waldstein gave the Cantor course of 
lectures before this Society in the spring of 1914, 
and in one of these, the theme of the day being 
"Fashion in Art and Industry", Lord San- 
derson in the chair. Sir Charles emphasized 
the transitory vogue, the ephemeral domina- 
tion of that factor in life called taste. The adap- 
tation of each new fashion leads to the discard- 
ing of a certain proportion of the materials 
in use before the change, and thus is fed the 
perpetual avidity of trade. Of the fashions 
of the hour. Sir Charles spoke at some length, 
with no complimentary attitude toward their 
grotesque character, and he suggested that the 
day when bells and castanets might be added 
to prevailing eccentricities may be by no means 
distant. 

The Society of Civil Engineers jBnds the 
genius of its membership represented in every 
region of the globe; the Chemical Society (also 
having its rooms in Burlington House) has an 
important membership, a fine library, and 
reading-rooms; the Educational Council has a 
department called Science and Art, which sup- 
ports eminent courses of lectures for working- 

71 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

men at a merely nominal price, a sixpence, only, 
being paid for a course of six. It was before 
this assembly that Huxley gave two of his great- 
est lectures: "The Coordination of the Modes 
of Motion of Living Bodies With Those of the 
Surrounding World" and "The Phenomena 
of Life as Motion and Consciousness." This 
organization has its house in Exhibition Road; 
and at the lectures the men gather in their 
working clothes, just as they come from the 
workshop; but while no one arrives much before 
the hour named, yet the hall is entirely filled 
and every seat taken, at the time for the lec- 
ture to begin. The intelligence with which this 
audience listens is only equaled by the intensity 
of interest manifested. Many a distinguished 
gathering in the more leisurely and richly en- 
dowed classes of life might well take a lesson 
from these audiences. 

At Finsbury Circus is established the London 
Institution, dating to 1815, which has a good 
library, both consulting and circulating, and pro- 
vides lectures twice a week. 

Few sojourners in London outside the scien- 
tific cult even know of the existence of one of 
the most extensive and important museums 
of practical geology, situated in Piccadilly, the 
building occupying the entire space through 
to Jermyn Street, which is open to visitors 

72 



THE ROYAL INSTITUTION 

every week-day in the year save in August. In 
Exhibition Road there is an Indian museum, 
with a fairly good collection, though a veracious 
chronicler could hardly invest it with much 
interest. The great Kensington Museum, in 
Brompton, a little distance from the beautiful 
Oratory of the "Immaculate Heart of Mary" 
(perhaps the most beautiful Roman Catholic 
church in Europe), is in Cromwell Road. 
Whether one is particularly enamored of mu- 
seum collections or not, he should not miss seeing 
the South Kensington, which, as it is by no 
means exclusively scientific, will be more fully 
alluded to in a subsequent chapter devoted to 
the national museums of London. 

The British Association for the Advance- 
ment of Science was organized in 1830, Sir 
David Brewster being the principal promoter; 
and its avowed object, "to give a stronger 
impulse and more systematic direction to scien- 
tific inquiry", is one that has been sustained 
and enlarged with the passing of every decade. 
In these annual deliberations of the great leaders 
of thought and research. Science and Philosophy 
clasp hands. The list of the presidents of this 
Association is almost, in itself, an epitome of the 
progress of the world, as 

"... the thoughts of men are widened with the process of 
the suns," 

73 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

as the "ancient founts of inspiration" pour their 
libations more directly on the march of progress. 
Among the notable presidents of the British 
Association have been Huxley, Lord Kelvin, 
Tyndall, Lord Salisbury, Sir George Darwin, Sir 
William Crookes, and Sir Joseph John Thom- 
son; and the body has been honored this past 
year by the presidency of Sir Oliver Lodge. 
During the eighty years and more of this Asso- 
ciation, there have been few sessions in which 
some important new discovery or invention, 
some of which, like Marconi's wireless teleg- 
raphy, have been epoch-making, has not been 
brought before its deliberations. Its influence is 
world-wide. Its membership, personal and cor- 
responding, represents almost every civilized 
country in the world. The meetings are held 
exclusively on British territory, largely in Eng- 
land, but one has been held in India, one or 
more in Canada, and occasionally in Scotland 
or Ireland. The city is appointed two years in 
advance, London being the only one in which 
no meeting of the Association is ever held. 
The long list of presidential addresses has in- 
cluded a few of more than transient interest, of 
which the more important have been that of Sir 
William Crookes, in 1898, notable for its pres- 
entation of the problem of telepathy; that of 
Sir Joseph John Thomson a few years later, 

74 



THE ROYAL INSTITUTION 

remarkable for its discussion of electrical pos- 
sibilities, and the address of Sir Oliver Lodge 
in 1913, which was nothing less than epoch-mak- 
ing in its affirmation of the scientific evidence 
for the continuity of life. Lord Kelvin once 
remarked that science is bound to face fearlessly 
every problem of life that can be presented. 
Sir Oliver shares the same conviction. He 
was a pioneer in wireless telegraphy; he is, 
as is well known, the leading authority on the 
ether; he was one of the early and most promi- 
nent investigators of psychical phenomena, and 
he is the absolute believer in the ultimate 
unity of faith and science. Sir Oliver became 
a life member of the British Association in 
1873, when he was but twenty -two years of 
age. He has always, even in his early youth, 
been a prominent worker in this body, serving 
as secretary of the section of mathematics 
and physics, and being engaged on special 
committees. At the meeting in Montreal, in 
1884, he delivered a lecture on "Dust" that 
greatly influenced the establishment of the 
National Physical Laboratory. He regards 
his attendance at a course of lectures by Doc- 
tor Tyndall on "Heat" as one of the contribut- 
ing influences of his life, and he also had the 
advantage of studying under Professor Huxley, 
and W. K. Clifford at Oxford. 

75 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

Sir William Crookes, in his presidential ad- 
dress, discussing telepathy, gave an analytical 
explanation of the mental mechanism that 
renders telepathy possible that is one of the 
most valuable contributions to modern science. 

A striking instance of telepathic communi- 
cation is narrated by that distinguished author, 
explorer, and lecturer, Mr. A. Henry Savage- 
Landor, the grandson of Walter Savage Landor, 
in the record of his journey ^ of thirteen months 
through regions hitherto unexplored in South 
America, crossing Brazil through the trackless 
wilderness. The explorer and his men were 
at one time sixteen days without food; Mr. 
Savage-Landor himself lay nearly dead, and 
wholly helpless in a hammock, after this ex- 
perience. During the days of starvation his 
parents and sister, in Florence (Italy), though 
knowing nothing of his expedition, "for I al- 
ways took the greatest care not to let them 
know," he says, when he was starting out on 
such a quest; nevertheless they constantly saw 
him (mentally) lying unconscious in a forest, 
dying of hunger. 

"When I reached Rio de Janeiro in April of 
the following year," says the explorer, "I 
found there a number of letters which had 

^ " Across Unknown South America." Boston, Little, Brown, and 
Company. 

76 



THE ROYAL INSTITUTION 

been written to me by my parents and my sister, 
during the month of September, in which they 
told me of these visions repeating themselves 
daily, especially between the dates of Sept. 
8-24. These letters were written long before 
anybody knew that I had ever suffered from 
starvation in the forest. And these visions 
reproduced the conditions with wonderful faith- 
fulness," adds the explorer, "the telepathic 
connection having in that case been established 
vividly at a distance of several thousand miles." 

That the universal acceptance of telepathy 
will constitute an important enlargement of 
human knowledge, as well as an addition to 
recognized human powers, Sir Oliver believes; 
but he does not regard it as absolutely revo- 
lutionary in psychology or science. "It appears 
to me very probable," says Sir Oliver, "that 
telepathy or thought transference is a form of 
direct communication between mind and mind, 
apart from the usual physical or material con- 
comitants. If so, it is a vitally important discov- 
ery, and should be confirmed by each one for 
himself through careful experiment and obser- 
vation, whenever opportunity occurs; so that 
gradually it may be recognized as an assured 
fact, not only by the few who have as yet taken 
the trouble to study it, but by all." 

Professor Schafer, who immediately preceded 

77 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

Sir Oliver Lodge as president of the British 
Association, made his address, at the meeting 
in Dundee in 1912, on "Life", and discussed 
the momentous question as to the possibihty 
of formulating its origin, or of artificially pro- 
ducing it. Thus it is seen that the tendency of 
this distinguished group of savants is constantly 
toward the problems of the deepest spiritual 
import. The Association for 1914 meets in 
Australia, and Professor Bateson, the celebrated 
biologist, who is the president-elect to succeed 
Sir Oliver, will make the mysteries involved 
in heredity as revealed and formulated by bio- 
logical science, the keynote of his address. 
As a deliberative body on the most important 
problems of human existence, the British Asso- 
ciation for the Advancement of Science stands 
unrivaled, and its contributions to the higher 
development of humanity are incalculably great 
and of immeasurable value. 



78 




Sir Oliver Lodge 



IV 

THE NATIONAL GALLERIES OF ART 

*'If a man could feel. 
Not one day, in the artist's ecstacy. 
But every day, feast, fast, or working day. 
The spiritual significance burn through 
The hieroglyphic of material shows. 
Henceforward he would paint the globe with wings. 

Art's a service, mark. . . ." 

Elizabeth Baerett BROWNtNO. 

The beginning of June sees everybody in 
London who is enabled to get there — by fair 
means, if they can, by foul means, if they 
must. The method is held to be quite subordi- 
nate to the results. The peerage and the nobil- 
ity, who have been occupying their castles 
and palaces in the country, or who have been 
passing the winter months in India, Egypt, 
Algiers, or Italy, return and open their great 
houses. Mayfair and Belgravia take on new 
aspects; the theatres, the opera, concerts, and 
the galleries are thronged ; Rotten Row becomes 
an animated scene; Hyde Park is filled with 
fashionable equipages; excursions are made to 
Richmond and other outlying resorts; dinners, 
balls, and musicales crowd the days and nights; 

79 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

the initiate "get in" a dozen social engage- 
ments of one kind and another during a day, 
and fashionable drawing-rooms offer brilliant 
scenes. Those who do not number a town house 
among their possessions take one for the sea- 
son; he who cannot compass a palace in Park 
Lane, or around Berkeley Square, engages a 
house as near this region as his bank account 
permits, and, failing a house, then an apart- 
ment; and those who come as observers rather 
than as the observed bestow themselves in 
modest lodgings, or in hotels, rather than not 
be in London at this witching time. 

"Now is the high tide of the year," 

and the London of smoke and gloom and dark- 
ness and pouring rains, with an atmosphere that 
suggests that of ice-fields, is suddenly trans- 
formed by some unguessed miracle into a city 
where sunshine is not unknown, and where soft 
shadows and dream-like haze mingle with the 
summer sunshine to produce the most fasci- 
nating color effects, whose fantastic blendings 
render them as unique as they are beautiful. 
Bond Street is filled with the visitors to its 
galleries, where thrifty dealers in art charge a 
small admittance fee, even while welcoming the 
throngs as possible buyers. The Dore Gallery is 
always a point of interest, and its pictorial at- 

80 



NATIONAL GALLERIES OF ART 

tractions are usually supplemented by some 
one famous work of art, whose theme or hand- 
ling is calculated to appeal to popular curiosity. 
The Bond Street shops, like those of Regent 
Street, are dear to the feminine heart, and the 
aspects of London, in their variety and im- 
mensity, might well be added to the traditional 
wonders of the world. The display of window- 
boxes gay with flowers in the fashionable resi- 
dential regions add color and charm to the 
Tnise en scene. 

This is the time to visit the great galleries of 
art, while the summer days are long and the 
light is favorable. Of these, first of all come 
the National Gallery of Trafalgar Square and 
the National Portrait Gallery in the rear; the 
Tate Gallery; the Wallace Collection; the new 
museum in Stafford House; the Victoria and 
Albert Museum; the Kensington Palace Mu- 
seum; the Soane, and the Corporation Art Gal- 
lery, the latter being of lesser importance. 

The National Gallery occupies a site of signal 
advantage on Trafalgar Square, commanding 
from its pillared portico a view of the colossal 
column supporting the statue of Nelson — a 
statue held to be one of the most atrocious in all 
sculpture, but as it can only be seen from the 
vantage ground of an aeroplane, or through 

81 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

a telescope, its ugliness matters little to the 
passer-by. Nor is one disposed to take a more 
cheerful view of the fountains, which, if sub- 
jected to so severe a test as a comparison with 
the noble fountains of the Place de la Concorde, 
fail to emerge with much dignity; but the 
lions, by Landseer, which guard the base 
of the Nelson monument, are generally ap- 
proved by the critical eye. When Sir Robert 
Peel declared that the view from the National 
Gallery was "the finest view in Europe", he 
seems to have laid himself quite liable to a gen- 
eral impeachment. Had Sir Robert ever gazed 
over Athens and the Athenian plain from the 
Acropolis.'^ or over Rome from the Janiculum? 
or had he ever visited Egypt, India, or the Alps.^* 
Had he ever surveyed Florence from Bellos- 
guardo, or even London from Hampstead at 
that magic spot where gleams through a softly- 
shadowed air the golden cross on the dome of St. 
Paul's? The local records do not answer these 
questions, and one has no choice but to con- 
sider that a recognition of beauty in panoramic 
view was not among the virtues and graces of 
Sir Robert. Yet, that there is an impressive 
suggestiveness in this vista must be conceded. 
In the background rise the towers of Westmin- 
ster Abbey and of the Houses of Parliament, 
majestic and invested with dignity. The pic- 

82 



NATIONAL GALLERIES OF ART 

torial Whitehall, and the beautiful arch leading 
into Pall Mall and St. James's Park, which 
is comparatively recent, could not have regaled 
the eyes of this Parliamentary hero. If he 
sinned against artistic canons, his Nemesis fol- 
lowed him closely, for his own statue, in West- 
minster Abbey, represents him as addressing 
the House clad in a Roman toga. 

St. Martin's church, however, rising from the 
broad flight of steps that leads to its Grecian 
portico, crowned by its high tower, a church 
dating to 1721 and considered as the master- 
piece of Gibbs, does much to support Sir 
Robert Peel's judgment. It requires some 
imagination to picture the present St. Martin's 
Lane, one of the most crowded thoroughfares, 
as "a shady lane with a hedge on either side"; 
yet it is still a place of surprises, as when one 
turns into some crowded narrow alley and sud- 
denly finds himself in a garden, sequestered 
amid high walls. But all London is rich in 
the unexpected. Its denizens who are most 
familiar with the monstrous, overgrown, and 
bewilderingly tortuous city, frequently find 
themselves virtually lost in pursuing some 
unfamiliar but apparently direct route to a given 
destination. Not even Paris, laid out on the 
star system of converging streets, can more 
mislead the unwary than can London. The 

83 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

more one traverses London, the less would he 
ever claim to know it. The extension of knowl- 
edge only serves to reveal his unsuspected 
depths of ignorance. Standing at a given point 
on Trafalgar Square, it seems to the stranger 
the merest detail to cross to another given 
point on some street easily within the range 
of his vision; but on arriving, apparently, at this 
destined goal, he will discover that the build- 
ing he was in quest of has miraculously changed 
its locality, and that his destination was in 
quite another direction. This confusion and the 
numerous optical delusions are a part of that 
curious character of the square in which every- 
thing is apt to appear where it is not. But it 
is just this confusion of detail that is dear to 
the heart of the Londoner. Would he have the 
crooked paths made straight? Perish the 
thought. That would not be London. Its 
very fascination is based on its baffling character. 
This is an essential ingredient in the "lure" 
of the vast metropolis. That it is like nothing 
else on the planet is the pride and joy of its 
townsmen. It has been said that human nature 
is like ivy that cannot cling to glass; it must 
plant its feet in imperfections. So with London. 
Its irregularity of detail, its incredible improb- 
abilities, its mathematical impossibilities, its 
unbelievable tricks of towers and cupolas and 

84 




cr 



p.. 



NATIONAL GALLERIES OF ART 

buildings descried at one time in a certain di- 
rection and at another quite invisible, its kalei- 
doscopic aspects that are determined by at- 
mospheric conditions, by fogs, haze, winds, 
clouds, are all factors in that magnetic fasci- 
nation which weaves its spell of impassioned 
devotion for the Londoner. He may endure 
for a time the enchantments of foreign travel; 
but sooner rather than later, the lure of London 
again controls and constrains him, and he can 
resist it as little as a needle resists the magnet. 
London, he declares, gives him everything he 
wants ; everything he can ask or desire. Where- 
fore, then, should he go migrating to far-famed 
lands that can offer him only partial grants of 
terrestrial enjoyment.'^ From the heights of 
the Posilipo, with its vision of a sunlit sea, and 
the bluest of skies bending over the danc- 
ing waters of the Naples bay; from the Pyra- 
mids, the Athenian plain, or the picturesque 
Norwegian panorama, his heart turns longingly 
to Trafalgar Square, with its monstrosities of 
plastic art, and its enormities of architectural 
effects. Of late some effort has been initiated 
for a transformation of this place. Never was 
a movement more unpopular. While the Nelson 
monument has the unenviable distinction of 
being one of the most hideous things in all 
Europe, the proposal to tear it down meets the 

85 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

consternation that might well prevail in Cairo 
if it were proposed to remove the Pyramids. 

It has been proposed to abolish the station 
of Charing Cross and to rebuild the National 
Gallery in a manner to render it an object of 
architectural beauty, rather than the reverse, 
— suggestions that are regarded as the voice of 
the tempter if not of the enemy, and which are 
to be righteously resisted. The Londoner 
may concede that all the premises are true, but 
he insists that the conclusion is false. He argues 
that it is this very lack of beauty which makes 
the vital characteristic of Trafalgar Square. 
It is this, indeed, which creates its atmosphere. 
It is the genius loci. As to the Nelson monu- 
ment, its very atrocities are to be prized and 
cherished, as embodying the artistic ideals of 
the time when it was erected. Has the past no 
claim? Are we to regard no art as of importance 
save that of the Futurist? Are not traditions 
venerable, and to be preserved? What is the 
mere beauty of the hour beside the interest 
that invests the historic past? There are many 
considerations, urges the devout Londoner, 
that may well take precedence of mere beauty. 
The Acropolis is a ruin, he will urge, but would 
you replace its classic columns by a modern 
hotel built on the Holy Hill? Would you re- 
move the Olympian, and build on the site an 

86 



NATIONAL GALLERIES OF ART 

apartment house? The abashed sojourner in 
London might suggest that the ugliness of Tra- 
falgar Square is not commensurate with the 
claim for classic ruins, and indeed, if he had 
the temerity, might even venture to assert that 
the sooner it was reduced to ruins, the better. 
But the temporary resident in the British 
Empire learns to be wary, and not break his 
head (or his heart) against the established con- 
victions of those who dwell therein. As has 
been said, London is not a city, but a universe. 
It has its own laws, and the first wisdom of the 
visitor is to learn to live and move and have 
his being in entire harmony with them. 

The National Gallery dates back only to 
1824, when it was opened in the residence of 
Mr. John Julius Angerstein, at Number 100 
Pall Mall; and it was not until 1838 that 
the present structure was completed. Its nu- 
cleus was a small but very choice collection of 
pictures left by Mr. Angerstein, which the 
government purchased at his death. It sub- 
sequently received many bequests, and nearly 
three million dollars have been expended in 
purchases since that time. While the collection 
is not as large as that of the Louvre and of 
some of the other galleries, it is unusually well 
selected, and it offers more adequate representa- 
tion of the great schools of painting than any 

87 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

other of the great national galleries, with a 
single deficiency of a lack in the eighteenth- 
century art of France. Its classification is un- 
usually excellent, and its arrangement could 
hardly be surpassed. 

Within the past few years the UflBzi in Flor- 
ence has been entirely rehung, to its great ad- 
vantage; and under Pope Pius X the Vatican 
galleries of paintings have been rearranged, to 
the great benefit of visitors; but even these, 
extensive in themselves, are comparatively 
small in comparison with the National Gallery, 
which includes nearly three thousand works 
of art, pictures, sculptures, and drawings. 
The representative character of the selection 
and its admirable arrangement combine to 
give the British National Gallery precedence 
over any other in the world as a place to study 
art. The different schools are kept together, 
and the splendid and finely representative col- 
lection of the Italian school, sub-divided into 
the Florentine, Tuscan, Sienese, Bolognese, 
Ferrarese, Umbrian, Venetian, Paduan, and 
Lombard, offers within this small space oppor- 
tunities for study that could only be obtained 
in Italy by wide travel and research. 

In the vestibule will be noted a group of 
extremely interesting Grseco-Roman portraits 
that are believed to date back to the second 

88 



NATIONAL GALLERIES OF ART 

century. These were discovered in the Fayiim 
in Egypt, in mummy cases taken from an an- 
cient cemetery during excavations made by 
Mr. FHnders Petrie. They were evidently 
portraits of the persons whose bodies were 
preserved in the cases, and are as vivid and 
realistic to-day as are the modern portraits of 
Sargent. The glowing beauty of a number of 
Italian altar-pieces, of the fourteenth century, 
include Botticelli's own "Nativity" and "Vir- 
gin and Child." Of the latter, Mr. Beresford 
Chancellor says, in reference to the sadness of 
the eyes, that it was undoubtedly painted after 
the artist had come under the influence of Sa- 
vonorola. "It is the last word on the hopes 
which the teaching of the martyr awakened in 
the hearts of his fellow men," says Mr. Chan- 
cellor; "it is full of symbolism, and its painter's 
mind had thought deeply since the days when 
he produced his 'Prima vera' and his * Birth of 
Venus.' " There is a Greek inscription above 
the picture that reads, in translation: 

"This picture I, Alexander, painted at the 
end of the year 1500, in the troubles of Italy, 
in the half-time after the time of the fulfillment 
of the eleventh of St. John, in the second woe 
of the Apocalypse, in the loosing of the devil for 
three years and a half. Afterwards he shall be 
chained, and we shall see him trodden down as 
in this picture." 

89 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

A Fra Angelico, "Christ Surrounded by 
Angels", rivets the attention of the lover of 
art; figures of which Vasari says: "They are so 
beautiful they appear to truly be of beings of 
Paradise." The faces of the angels recall to one 
the words of Ruskin on this painter of divine 
loveliness : 

"The life of Angelico was almost entirely 
spent in the endeavor to imagine the beings 
belonging to another world. By purity of life, 
habitual elevation of thought, and natural 
sweetness of disposition, he was enabled to 
express the sacred affections upon the human 
countenance as no one ever did before or since. 
In order to effect clearer distinction between 
heavenly beings and those of this world, he 
represents the former as clothed in draperies 
of the purest color, crowned with glories of 
burnished gold, and entirely shadowless." 

The National Gallery has but one example 
of Leonardo da Vinci, but that one is the 
incomparable "Virgin of the Rocks." Cor- 
reggio's "Mercury and Cupid" is one of which 
Mr. Chancellor says that "the artist's power 
of painting flesh that really seems to cover 
the pulsations of life " is wonderful. Mrs. 
Jameson, writing of Correggio, in special allu- 
sion to this picture, says: "Those who dwell 
with rapture on it will perceive that in the 

90 



NATIONAL GALLERIES OF ART 

painting of the limbs they can look through 
the shadows into the substance; . . . the shad- 
ows seem mutable, accidental, and aerial, as 
if between the eye and the color, and not in- 
corporated with them; in this lies the inimitable 
excellence of this master." 

The group of Raphaels includes the tran- 
scendent work, the "Ansidei Madonna", pur- 
chased from the eighth Duke of Marlborough 
at a cost of three hundred and fifty thousand 
dollars. The first Duke of Marlborough ob- 
tained the work directly from the Ansidei 
family in Perugia for whom Raphael originally 
painted it. 

The Dutch, the French, and the Spanish 
schools are as adequately represented as is the 
Italian. The great examples of English art, 
from Sir Joshua Reynolds, Romney, Benja- 
min West, Sir David Wilkie, Hogarth, Turner, 
Gilbert Stuart, William Blake, John Constable, 
David Cox, Gainsborough, Copley, Fielding, 
Sir John Gilbert, Sir Peter Lely, Sir Thomas 
Lawrence, Sir Edwin Landseer, Frith, Flax- 
man, — to the latter-day masters. Sir John 
Millais, Lord Leigh ton. Sir Lawrence Alma- 
Tadema, Sir Edward Burne-Jones, Watts, Sir 
Hubert Herkomer, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 
are well represented; although the contem- 
porary painters are far more largely to be found 

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THE LURE OF LONDON 

in the' Tate and in the Victoria and Albert, and 
they offer to the visitor not only a magnificent 
collection of the masterpieces of British art, but 
many works whose claim is that of personal and 
historic, rather than of exclusively artistic, in- 
terest. Here will be found Romney's portrait 
of Lady Hamilton (Emma Lyon), the heroine of 
many a romantic tale and the love of Nelson; 
Turner's "Funeral of Sir Thomas Lawrence'*; 
Sir David Wilkie's "The Preaching of John 
Knox", and other dramatic transcriptions from 
life. 

The Turner room is the one to which the 
visitor is perhaps most often allured because of 
its beauty of color and poetic vision. The most 
brilliant and richly imaginative of British paint- 
ers, Turner found in Italy his deepest inspi- 
ration. "If Mr. Ruskin is right in attributing 
to Turner the intention of teaching in * Apollo 
and the Sibyl ' the vanity of life, and in ' Calig- 
ula's Palace' the vanity of labor, it would 
follow naturally that in the 'Childe Harold' 
he meant to emphasize the vanity of pleasure. 
There is usually an inner meaning in Turner's 
pictures. Sympathy with human life is never 
absent, and in most there is a touch of sadness, 
a recognition of the passing away of man and 
all his works. This may be the meaning sug- 
gested by the ruins, which form an important 

92 



NATIONAL GALLERIES OF ART 

feature in each of these three pictures. . . . 
But, for the moment, we forget all else in the 
happiness inspired by the loveliness of the 
scene. The whole picture ['Childe Harold's 
Pilgrimage'] sparkles like a jewel. The rosy- 
tints on the ruins, the blue waters, the pearly 
middle distance, the gleams of light on the 
nearer buildings and on the far-off town, and 
the wide expanse of country leading the eye to 
the hills on the horizon, are all brought out with 
subtle skill, and blend in one harmonious 
whole." One of the most fascinating of these 
pictures of Turner is that of *'Lake Avernus, 
the Fates, and the Golden Bough." Mr. Ham- 
erton has so translated this picture into words 
when he thus describes it, that his description 
is almost a component part of the work itself: 

"The painter has so treated his subject,'* 
says Mr. Hamerton of Turner, "that the pale 
blue waters of Avernus, sleeping so calmly 
in their deep basin, scarcely recall to us as we 
see them in the picture, that dark river Acheron 
from which they were believed to rise. The 
only motive of the painter appears to have 
been beauty; the beauty of a fair Italian land- 
scape, idealized to the utmost by the power 
of his genius. The pictures of this class are, 
I believe, the most perfect and complete expres- 
sion ever given by Turner to his sense of charm 
and loveliness in landscape, as distinguished from 

93 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

his sterner delight in the subhme. No one who 
has not tried to paint, and tried seriously and 
long, can estimate the delicacy of tone and color 
in these pictures, the exquisiteness of the tran- 
sitions in the lightest passages, and the sustained 
refinement which could carry the artist safely 
over twenty or thirty square feet of canvas, 
when the slightest failure would have shown as 
an intolerable blot upon his work." 

To enter the Turner room in the National 
Gallery is to leave all the turmoil and clamor 
of earth for a realm of celestial beauty and en- 
chantment. The perfection of technical skill 
that characterized Turner is lost sight of in 
that marvellous creative power which seems to 
have instantaneously brought these wonderful 
scenes into existence. Entering the Turner 
room, one is transported to Italian sunshine 
and Italian air. Look at that charming "Bay 
of Baiae", with "Apollo and the Sibyl", and 
you come instantly under all the magic and 
witchery of the Naples shore. The dramatic 
imagination, the sense of mystery investing 
the figure of the Sibyl, the perspective of the 
distance, the refinement of the drawing, and 
above all the sense of the atmosphere of a 
magic land, — all these he has portrayed as if 
drawing aside a curtain to reveal an actual 
scene. Turner is the great interpreter of all 
that is poetic in nature and legend. He is 

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NATIONAL GALLERIES OF ART 

the painter of the air. But he is also the painter 
of the sea. In "The Shipwreck", "The Prince 
of Orange Landing at Torbay", and "The 
Sun at Venice going to Sea"; "The Fighting 
Temeraire", representing the second ship in 
Nelson's line at Trafalgar being towed to her 
final berth to be destroyed, "the most pa- 
thetic picture ever painted", says Ruskin; in 
the strange, tragic "Burial of Wilkie", showing 
the body of the painter being committed to the 
sea, from the decks of the Orient, on which he 
died, — the scene laid off Gibraltar, with that 
peculiar vividness in the sky that is seen at 
times in the region between Madeira and Algiers ; 
how remarkably, in all these and other paint- 
ings, does he prove himself the interpreter of 
the sea as well as of the atmosphere. In an- 
other mood is his "Crossing the Brook", a 
quiet, idyllic English scene, and "Rain, Steam, 
and Speed", a picture showing a train of the 
Great Western Railway crossing a viaduct, with 
the fire in the engine gleaming, while beyond 
are clouds of rain that fill the air, — a dim vista 
of open country. In this Turner has painted 
motion as well as air. One of his great classic 
pictures is the "Dido Building Carthage", 
which reveals a scene lying under glowing sun- 
shine, with architectural masses in a stage of 
completion on either side, and Queen Dido 

95 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

surrounded by her people, while in the back- 
ground rises the monument to Sichaeus, her 
murdered husband. This picture is signed 
"J. M. W. Turner, 1815." It is one of those 
bequeathed to the nation by the artist himself. 
He died in Chelsea (London) in 1851, at the age 
of seventy-six. 

Genius is its own ancestor, and eludes all 
explanation or analysis. This transcendently 
great artist was born in Co vent Garden, of 
humble parentage and into all the limitations 
of poverty. The mother was of a highly excit- 
able temperament, finally ending in insanity; 
but the future painter was not lacking in mental 
poise, or caliber. He gave early evidence of a 
strong attraction to literature, and he was 
especially devoted to Milton. At the age of 
twenty-two he was an exhibitor in the Royal 
Academy, and he was elected an Academician 
five years later. His first work shown in the 
Academy exhibition, "Morning among Conis- 
ton Fells," was inscribed with these lines from 
Milton; 

"Ye mists and exhalations, that now rise 
From hill, or steaming lake, dusky or grey 
Till the sun paint your fleecy skirts with gold; 
In honor to the world's great Author, rise." 

Sir Joshua Reynolds is liberally represented 
in the gallery by twenty -two of his works. 

96 



NATIONAL GALLERIES OF ART 

Born in 1723, he lived until 1792, and to his 
genius as an artist he added a combination of 
gifts that enabled him to exercise a dominant 
influence on the art of his day. Of the Royal 
Academy (organized in 1768) he was the first 
president; and being enabled to go to Italy at 
the age of twenty-six, he came under the strong 
attraction of the Venetian school. For two 
years he was able to study in Rome. Titian 
became his idol, and it is said he once scraped 
one of the great master's paintings in an effort 
to discover the secret of his coloring. Ruskin 
feels that no artist ever had "a more intense 
and innate gift of insight into human nature 
than Sir Joshua." 

"Considered as a painter of the human form 
and mind," continued Ruskin, "I think him 
the prince of portrait painters. Titian paints 
nobler pictures, and Van Dyck had nobler sub- 
jects, but neither of them entered so subtly as 
Sir Joshua into the minor varieties of human 
heart and temper; and when you consider that 
in a northern climate, with gray, white and 
black as the principal colors about him, he yet 
became a colorist who can be crushed by none, 
even of the Venetians, and that, with Dutch 
painting and Dresden china for the prevailing 
types of art in the salons of his day, he threw 
himself at the feet of the great masters of Italy, 
and arose to share their throne, — I know 
not that in the whole history of art you can 

97 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

produce another instance of so strong, so unaided 
so unerring an instinct for all that was true, 
pure, and noble." 

When in 1752 Reynolds returned to London 
from his sojourn abroad, and settled in St. 
Martin's Lane, his prestige was almost imme- 
diately established, and his supremacy warmly 
recognized. He idealized the sitter to just the 
degree required to render a portrait captivat- 
ing, but still natural; he entered upon each one 
with the determination to make it the best work 
of his life up to that point; and it is said that he 
taught himself to paint a portrait in four hours. 
While his price in the beginning was five guin- 
eas, it rose to fifty. In his later life he averaged 
six thousand pounds a year as the results of 
his work. Sir Joshua initiated the pleasant 
custom of the Academy dinners, and at the an- 
nual meetings when the prizes were bestowed 
he gave discourses which were highly regarded. 
His special counsel to young students was to 
study the old masters. Unusually accomplished 
and endowed with a winning courtesy of man- 
ner that was one of his most valuable gifts, he 
won troops of friends. Among these Doctor 
Johnson stands prominently, and Goldsmith 
was also of his nearer circle. His range of 
friendships had a bearing on his art, determin- 
ing the rank of many sitters. Thus the splen- 

98 



NATIONAL GALLERIES OF ART 

did work called "The Graces Decorating a 
Statue of Hymen" is really a portraiture of 
the three daughters of Sir William Montgom- 
ery, to whose beauty Sir Joshua lent immor- 
tality. 

The portraits of Sir Thomas Lawrence include 
one of John Julius Angerstein, that no one would 
miss because of the connection of its subject 
with the founding of the gallery, and the en- 
during friendship that existed between the sitter 
and the artist. An unusual scene is brilliantly 
depicted in Constable's "The Cornfield", with 
a characteristic English lane in the foreground. 
Another picture of Constable's before which one 
lingers in delight is "The Glebe", one of the 
most typical of English scenes. 

Among the works of the French school is 
Philippe de Champaigne's portrait of Cardinal 
Richelieu, to which Sir Henry Irving is said 
to have resorted as his study in making up for 
the Cardinal on the stage. Gainsborough's por- 
trait of Mrs. Siddons, painted when she was 
twenty-nine years of age, and Sir Joshua's por- 
trait of her as "The Tragic Muse", are always 
appreciated by every lover of art. Consta- 
ble's "View on Hampstead Heath" lingers in 
memory as a delightful picture of that delight- 
ful part of London. 

The Spanish school as here represented offers 

99 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

the celebrated "Venus and Cupid" of Velas- 
quez, with several others of his works; the gal- 
lery being indeed rich in the paintings of this 
brilliant artist. From Murillo there are five 
paintings, including the "Holy Family" and a 
small study of the "Nativity of the Virgin " (of 
which the complete picture is in the Louvre); 
and there are also examples of Ribera and Zur- 
baran. From the French school the pictures 
are not of especial interest, although there are 
several by Claude Lorraine of exceptional beauty, 
and Greuze, Nicholas Poussin, and some paint- 
ers from the Barbizon school are represented. 

The National Portrait Gallery is almost an 
epitome of the history and the literary and 
scientific fame of England. The present ac- 
complished director, Charles John Holmes, M. 
A. (formerly Slade Professor of Fine Arts in 
Oxford), succeeded Mr. Lionel Cust in 1909, 
and to his critical knowledge and enthusi- 
asm for the vigor and the constant advance- 
ment of this intensely interesting collection, its 
increasing service to the nation is largely due. 
The present building was opened to the public 
in 1896. The arrangement is such as to facil- 
itate the value of the gallery. The portraits 
from the Tudor age to the end of the eighteenth 
century are on the highest floor. On the land- 
ings are the royal portraits from George I to 

100 



NATIONAL GALLERIES OF ART 

Edward VII. On the first floor are the por- 
traits of the statesmen of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, and in the east wing are placed those of 
the more important men of letters, science, and 
art, with soldiers and explorers of the century 
just closed. The miniatures and drawings are 
on the ground floor, and the sculptures in a gal- 
lery opening from the entrance hall. Among 
the portraits of international interest is one of 
Cardinal Newman, painted in 1889, when he 
was in his eighty-ninth year; a three-fourths 
length, the delicate, spiritual face, and the 
wonderful, penetrating glance of the eye being 
depicted to the life. The author of the Apolo- 
gia pro vita sua; the associate leader, with 
Pusey and Hurrell Froude, of the Oxford move- 
ment: the founder of the Oratory at Birming- 
ham and the beautiful church in Brompton, 
that has introduced into England the Institute 
of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri, the poet, the 
writer, the mystic, — the entire personality 
of the great Cardinal seems before one in this 
portrait. There is also a cast of the fine bust 
of His Eminence, modeled in 1866, by Thomas 
Woolner, R. A. 

Two portraits of Sir Isaac Newton attract 
the visitor: one is the portrait painted of him 
in his youth by Sir Godfrey Kneller, and the 
other, in later life, painted by John Vander- 

101 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

bank. A marble bust of the great scientist 
copied from Roubillac by Edward Hodges 
Baily, a member of the Royal Academy, is 
most interesting, and is said to reproduce the 
countenance as the body lay in state in the 
Jerusalem Chamber of Westminster Abbey, 
before its final committal. 

The portrait of Cecil Rhodes, by George 
Frederick Watts, though unfortunately not 
completed, is one of the most interesting in 
the collection, suggesting the energy and genius 
of the man who was a most efficient and deter- 
mining factor in the latter-day development of 
imperial Britain. It has been said of this por- 
trait that it was by "one of the most ideal- 
istic of English artists, of the most idealistic 
of English conquerors." The noble collection of 
great men painted by Mr. Watts is one of the 
most valuable features of the entire National 
Gallery. Tennyson once begged Mr. Watts 
to express his ideal of what a true portrait 
artist should be, to which he replied that he 
could not but think *'that in the future, and in 
stronger hands than mine. Art may yet speak, 
as great as poetry itself, with the solemn and 
majestic ring in which the Hebrew prophets 
spoke to the Jews of old, demanding noble 
aspirations." The present Lord Tennyson as- 
scribes to this reply the following lines which his 

102 



NATIONAL GALLERIES OF ART 

father, the poet, wrote in the "Idylls," as an 
interpretation of the artist's words: 

"As when a painter, poring on a face. 
Divinely, through all hindrance, finds the man 
Behind it, and so paints him that his face, 
The shape and colour of a mind and life. 
Lives for his children, ever at its best." 

The portrait of John Stuart Mill (another of 
the Watts group) is the portrayal of the very 
ideal of the philosopher, essayist, and political 
economist. Still another of the celebrated 
Watts portraits is that of the saintly divine, 
James Martineau, philosopher and mystic, and 
one of the great leaders of modern religious 
thought. 

A portrait of Walter Savage Landor, painted 
by William Fisher, is always a special object of 
literary quest, and this picture is soon to have 
a companion piece in the portrait of the incom- 
parable poet and the author of the "Imagi- 
nary Conversations", which was painted in his 
eighty-eighth year (one year before his death), 
and which has been presented by its owner to 
the National Portrait Gallery. This is by 
Charles Caryll Coleman, who painted it as a 
young artist in Italy, and as the last portrait 
of Landor, representing him in his magnificent 
old age, it has an enduring interest. The aged 
poet was posed with his back to a window, 

103 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

that the light might fall on his head, investing 
him with a sort of glory. 

A chalk drawing of Edward Bouverie Pusey, 
done by George Richmond, gives a graphic pic- 
ture of this celebrated divine and religious leader. 
James Anthony Froude, in a drawing in col- 
ored chalk; Thomas Gainsborough, painted by 
himself; a splendid portrait of Charles Robert 
Darwin, by Collier, a replica of the one painted 
for the Linnean Society, and a medallion 
portrait of Sir Humphry Davy are of great 
interest, as are three portraits of the great 
woman novelist who was known to the world as 
George Eliot. 

The portrait of the greatest of women poets, 
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (drawn in chalk, 
by Field Talfourd in Rome, 1859); and three 
portraits of Robert Browning — one by Field 
Talfourd in chalk, the companion piece to that 
of Mrs. Browning, one painted in 1884 by 
Rudolph Lehmann, and the incomparable por- 
trait by Watts, painted in 1875 — are among 
the special fascinations of the collection. 

Dante Gabriel Rossetti's pencil drawing of 
Ford Madox Brown ; George Richmond's crayon 
portrait of Charlotte Bronte (in 1850) are al- 
ways noted, and in the spring of 1914 the 
gallery acquired the long-lost portrait of the 
three sisters, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Bronte 

104 




Iliprutldcvd hy piriiu.-<xi(iit iif Ihe .Witniiiul I'vrtnut Gallery 

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, drawn by himself 

National Portrait Gallery 



NATIONAL GALLERIES OF ART 

in a group, painted by their brother Branwell 
Bronte, in 1835. Charlotte was then nine- 
teen, Emily one year younger, and Anne was 
fifteen. Another portrait of Emily Bronte, 
a fragment of a group, painted by her brother in 
1845, has been discovered and added to this 
collection. 

A very unique and interesting portrait in 
plaster cast, is of the celebrated Arabic scholar, 
Edward William Lane, represented in a sitting 
posture, in Egyptian costume. This is kept 
under a glass case. Another of the noble por- 
traits of Watts is that of Matthew Arnold; 
and of Thomas Arnold, of ever-remembered 
fame as the master of Rugby, there is a marble 
bust, modeled by Behnes. Of Lord Leighton 
there is the famous portrait by Watts. 

Turner is represented by a portrait in colored 
chalks and one in water-colors, done by himself. 
The original plaster cast of the recumbent 
statue of Dean Stanley (for his tomb in the 
Abbey) is here; and another admirable Watts 
portrait is that of Henry Edward, Cardinal 
Manning, showing his Eminence in his Cardi- 
nal's robes, at the age of seventy -four; there 
are five portraits (paintings and portrait busts 
inclusive) of Lord Tennyson. A replica of 
Collier's celebrated portrait of Sir William 
Huggins, showing him seated in the presiden- 

105 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

tial chair of the Royal Society, was presented to 
the gallery by Lady Huggins, the original being 
the property of the Royal Socjety. Of Lord 
Kelvin there is a life-size portrait, painted when 
he was sixty-two years of age, and in the zenith 
of his fame. A bust of Arthur Hugh Clough; 
a portrait of Carlyle (unfinished) by Millais; 
another by Watts; a bust modeled by Boehm; 
a cast from the medallion of Carlyle by Wool- 
ner, and a plaster cast of his hands, make up a 
group of Carlyle memorials. A painting of 
Isaac Watts; a portrait of William Wilber- 
force, the great liberator and philanthropist, 
by Sir Thomas Lawrence, and of his son, Sam- 
uel Wilberforce, one of the most distinguished 
prelates of the church, by George Richmond, 
showing the bishop in his Episcopal robes, are 
among the works constantly admired by the 
casual visitor, or the habitue of these galleries. 
The drawing of Whistler, by Leslie Ward, is 
one of the most original individualizations; 
Swinburne is marvellously portrayed by Watts; 
Herbert Spencer's portrait is by Burgess; Mary 
Somerville is shown in a chalk drawing by 
Swinton; Ruskin is shown in a drawing by 
George Richmond; of Benjamin Thompson, 
later Count Rumford, the founder of the Royal 
Institution, there is a portrait copied from the 
original by Kellerhoven; and of Dante Gabriel 

106 



NATIONAL GALLERIES OF ART 

Rossetti there is an interesting portrait by the 
artist himself, at the age of eighteen, and one 
by Watts painted in 1865, when Rossetti was 
thirty-seven years of age. Of Christina Ros- 
setti there is a portrait, with one of her mother 
(Frances Mary Lavinia Rossetti) drawn in 
1877 by her brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti. 
There are two portraits of the first Duke of 
Wellington; and the group of portraits of 
Queen Victoria are especially attractive. There 
is the portrait bust of Sir Francis Chantrey, 
modeled in 1841; the plaster bust modeled by 
Boehm; the portrait drawn by Sir David Wilkie 
in 1839; the copy (made by Fraiilein Bertha 
Miiller) of the painting by Heinrich von An- 
geli, in 1899; a copy in water-colors of the por- 
trait painted in 1875 by von Angeli; and 
the charming portrait of Her Majesty in 
her coronation robes (as worn at Westminster 
Abbey, June 28, 1838) painted by Sir George 
Hayter. 

Shelley's portrait, painted in Rome in 1819 
by Amelia Curran, and a picture of Mary Woll- 
stonecraft Shelley, painted by Roth well in 
1841, are among those always looked for. 
George Frederick Watts, who has himself so 
signally contributed to the portraiture of many 
of the most distinguished men of letters, was 
painted by Henry Wyndham Phillips, and 

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THE LURE OF LONDON 

another portrait by himself, unfortunately not 
finished, is also displayed in the gallery. 

The National Gallery of England is fairly 
an international shrine of art, considering its 
widely representative character; but that there 
is a distinctively British School is also true. In 
a more definite sense, this is comparatively 
recent. England had her great masters in Rey- 
nolds, Gainsborough, Lawrence, Romney, Con- 
stable, Turner, and they are not of remote 
date, compared with continental art; but the 
more definite art of England begins with the 
pre-Raphaelite movement, and its leaders are 
the group including Holman Hunt, Rossetti, 
Ford Madox Brown, William Morris, and 
Millais. To this group succeeded Leighton, 
Watts, Alma-Tadema, Burne-Jones, and others 
who have modified and transformed pre-Ra- 
phaelite art and still are somewhat indebted to 
its influence. Of the works of this remarkable 
group, the Tate Gallery offers the special ex- 
position. Its official name is that of the Na- 
tional Gallery of British Art, and its origin 
precedes even the munificent bequest of Sir 
Henry Tate, and opens with that of Sir Francis 
Chantrey, the distinguished sculptor, who, in 
1842, devised his estate to the Royal Academy 
for the purchase of British art. Architecturally, 
the Tate Gallery is attractive, its design being 

108 







si 



a .2 



NATIONAL GALLERIES OF ART 

"a free classic style, with a Greek feeling in 
the mouldings and ornaments"; the entrance, 
on its lofty elevation, with six Corinthian col- 
umns, is an imposing one. The first important 
contribution to this collection, after the placing 
of the Chantrey and the Tate works, was that 
of eighteen pictures from George Frederick 
Watts, the great artist who was well termed '*a 
painter of ideas." The work of Watts combines 
in the most felicitous degree the power of charm- 
ing the imagination, and of noble stimulating 
thought. 

George Frederick Watts (born in 1817, died 
in 1904) was almost as renowned for his circle 
of friendships as for his paintings, for his great 
imaginative work inspired unusual attention 
from men of eminence in literature, statesman- 
ship, and science. His aim was not a wonderful 
technique that should say, with consummate art, 
that which was not worth saying; but instead, 
his intention was to arouse and kindle all that 
was best in mind and heart. Frederic W. H. 
Myers pays him deserved tribute in the lines: 

"For many a year the master wrought 

And wisdom deepened slow with years; 
Guest-chambers of his inmost thought 

Were filled with shapes too stern for tears; — 
Yet Joy was there, and murmuring Love, 

And Youth that hears with hastened breath, 
But, throned in peace all those above, 
The unrevealing eyes of Death." 
109 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

Among the works of Mr. Watts exhibited 
here are the famous and widely famihar " Love 
and Life" and "Love and Death"; the " Hope"; 
the "Dweller in the Innermost"; the symbolic 
figure, "For he had Great Possessions", — a 
man turning his back on the Christ, while the 
tension of the fingers suggests his uncertainty 
whether to open or close his hand. The "Dwel- 
ler" is one of the most significant of his works; 
it is personified as a female form, with a star 
shining on her forehead, and in her lap the 
arrows of truth that pierce all disguise and de- 
ceit; the trumpet that shall proclaim truth to 
the world. The entire figure is invested with a 
radiant light. Another of the great symbolical 
works is called "Sic Transit Gloria Mundi!" 
the canvas inscribed with the lines; 

"What I spent, I had ! 
What I saved, I lost! 
What I gave, I have!" 

A shrouded figure lies on a slab of marble in a 
dim aisle of a vast cathedral, while at the foot 
are grouped the typical things that pass away: 
gold coins, a jeweled cup, a helmet with pea- 
cock's plume, a coronet and the ermine, a book, 
a lute, a shield, a glove; and at the head a faded 
laurel wreath. "The Messenger", "Eve", and 
other noble works by Mr. Watts may be studied 
in this collection. 

110 



NATIONAL GALLERIES OF ART 

Mr. Sargent's "Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose", 
that brilliant composition, is here. The '* Speak! 
Speak!" of Sir John Millais, a picture suggested 
by Tennyson's stanza in "In Memoriam" begin- 
ning " Tears of the widower", shows a man re- 
clining, and looking up from the letters of his be- 
loved which he has been reading, to see her form 
standing between the parting of the curtains. 

That impressive picture by Lord Leighton, 
"And The Sea Gave Up Its Dead", was 
exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1892, exciting 
great attention. It was originally intended to 
be executed in mosaic and placed in the dome of 
St. Paul's, but this idea was finally abandoned. 
Lord Leighton was for seventeen years the pres- 
ident of the Royal Academy, and it is univer- 
sally conceded that he was the most brilliant 
and inspiring one that ever occupied the chair. 
The most distinguished president since Sir 
Joshua, he surpassed that celebrated artist in 
personal qualities. He contributed immeas- 
urably to the advancement of standards pre- 
viously held; he illustrated in his own life the 
ideals that he reverenced. His courtesy was 
the natural expression of the most generous 
and considerate nature; he was intensely sym- 
pathetic and responsive, swiftly discerning, and 
had that incomparable genius of saying the right 
word at the right moment. With this exquisite 

111 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

courtesy and infinite kindness of heart he com- 
bined untiring devotion to his art, invariable 
promptness in every duty, and splendid execu- 
tive ability. "His life was more noble than 
anything in his work," said Watts of Leighton, 
and Watts has more than once placed himself 
on record in high appreciation, also, of Lord 
Leighton 's art. 

When Frederick Leighton was at the age of 
ten, his father took the family to Rome, and 
the lad visited galleries, churches, ruins, and 
palaces, and reveled in the great treasures of 
art. Later the family sojourned in Naples and 
Sicily, passing on to Florence, Bologna, and Ven- 
ice. Leighton was a linguist from his child- 
hood, and the taste and the abundant means of 
his father conspired to give him every advan- 
tage of masters and opportunities. In all his 
youth, as well as in later life, he was much on 
the continent, in Germany, Paris, Spain, and 
his early successes brought joy to his friends. 
"Do you know young Leighton of Rome.''" 
wrote Mrs. Browning to a friend in 1855. "If 
so, you will be glad of this wonderful success of 
his picture,^ bought by the Queen, and ap- 
plauded by the Academicians, and he not 
twenty -five." The splendid house that Lord 

1 The picture to which Mrs. Browning alludes was the " Cima- 
bue's Madonna carried through Florence." 

112 



NATIONAL GALLERIES OF ART 

Leighton established in Holland Park remains 
one of the famous places to visit in London. 
The spacious entrance hall is adorned with 
Italian art and paintings, with photographs 
and engravings, and also with many examples 
of Greek sculpture. 

The Soane Museum is perhaps as little known 
to the general public as is possible for anything 
in London to be, and is little visited. It was the 
private residence of Sir John Soane, standing on 
the north side of Lincoln's Inn Fields, and was 
left to the public somewhere about 1835. It is 
only opened two days in a week for some three 
months of the year, and it would seem that even 
on these days no one goes. In the mad rush of 
twentieth-century life, who can remember that 
these months are April, May, and June, or 
discover on what days of the week one may find 
access to "Number thirteen" Lincoln's Inn 
Fields.'^ While there is a vast chronological 
gulf between Pompeii and the Soane, yet the 
intimate character of the house can but recall 
the way in which, in the new excavations in 
Pompeii, the visitor is taken into the domestic 
confidence of the family. One of those delightful 
chroniclers in which London abounds, and who 
not infrequently publish in the daily press some 
little gem of an essay or sketch, thus writes of 
the Soane : 

113 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

*'0n the north side of Lincoln's Inn Fields 
is the Soane museum, — a curious medley of odds 
and ends, with a few priceless things among 
them, and a very capricious system of throwing 
open its doors. Indeed, I know of no museum 
where the presence of visitors seems to be so re- 
sented; for after overcoming initial difficulties of 
getting in — the treasures being on view for only 
three months in the year and for certain days 
of the week; after ringing the bell, and wiping 
one's boots according to order; after giving up 
one's stick, writing one's name in a book, and 
deciding as to whether or not the place is sacred 
and how to deal with one's hat; after all this, 
the successful besieger becomes aware of three 
further dampening influences, — want of light, 
absence of descriptive labels on the million 
and one fragments and knickknacks that make 
up this olla podrida, and the presence in every 
room of a venerable custodian whose slumbers 
one is conscious of cruelly interrupting by being 
so extraordinarily and unpardonably inconsid- 
erate as to be there at all." 

The olla podrida comprises almost everything 
from the depths (and heights) of the earth to 
the waters under the earth. There are sarcoph- 
agi, and "Aurora and the Morning Star led 
on by the Hours!" There is a replica of Sir 
Joshua Reynolds's "Snake In The Grass", and 
there are "Flower Girls" and "Pygmalions" 
and "Seasons With The Pleiades." There are 
series of drawings from Hogarth, sketches 

114 



NATIONAL GALLERIES OF ART 

by Turner, framed autographs, portraits of 
various generations of the house of Soane, — 
worthies long since dead and gone, — and if 
you are of an aesthetic turn of mind you can 
only wish the portraits had followed the origi- 
nals into Paradise the Blest, or wherever their 
virtues and graces have opened for them a place 
of sojourn after life's fitful fever. Of course 
there are portraits of Napoleon, and reminders 
of the Duke of Wellington, and of George III, 
and various other personages for whom the life 
of to-day has little space; and there are the usual 
collectors' rubbish of sketches "said to be" by 
any illustrious name that can be conveniently at- 
tached. The delightful vagueness of such labels 
permits any range of the imagination. But 
there is a really genuine little drawing in colors, 
on vellum, by Raphael; and there is a Turner 
which one would willingly go farther and fare 
worse to see. Then there is a portrait of Sir 
John Soane himself, painted by Sir Thomas 
Lawrence. Visiting the Soane is one of those 
things that one checks off, as closed for the 
remainder of one's life, and that never need be 
repeated; but for once in a way an hour or two 
there is not "half bad", to borrow the vernac- 
ular of the Londoner. 

Another haunt, apparently tenanted chiefly 
by spectres, is the "Diploma" Gallery, a shrine 

115 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

of art seldom discovered by the visitor in the 
British metropolis. It is, however, one of the 
surprises that help to create the indefinable 
lure of London, and the "Diploma" collection 
owes its existence to a law passed (in 1770) 
requiring each member of the Royal Academy 
of Arts to deposit in the academy a specimen 
of his skill. The repository for these manifes- 
tations of genius is at the top of Burlington 
House, to which one mounts by "stairways of 
surprise." In darkness and tortuous ways, one 
feels, rather than sees, his way up the narrow, 
crooked, cob webbed ascent; proceeding by faith 
rather than by sight, until he arrives at the 
chamber that Mr. Henry James might have 
instanced (though he did not) as the Sacred 
Fount. Unlike the fitful and uncertain hos- 
.pitalities of the Soane, the Diploma Gallery is 
open every day, free to all, with its testimonials 
of greatness to be had for the asking, or, rather, 
for the climbing. If the psychometrical reader 
could lay hold of Sir Joshua's luxurious "sitter's 
chair" that is preserved here, what ghosts and 
scenes could he not conjure up? 

This chair has been the successive possession 
of the presidents of the Royal Academy until 
1873, when Sir Frederick Leigh ton relegated it 
to this salon. As one climbs to this dream- 
haunted place with an Emersonian conviction 

116 



NATIONAL GALLERIES OF ART 

that "higher and higher man's spirit must," not 
*'dive", but climb, the hardships of his progress 
are mitigated by artistic alleviations; a group 
of Constable's "Studies of Sky and Cloud," 
hanging on the walls of the staircase; Flax- 
man's designs for "^schylus"; a drawing by 
Benjamin West; a portrait by Prescott Knight 
of Thomas Vaughan. In the salons above, one 
finds that George Frederick Watts, with his 
characteristic generosity, has presented his pow- 
erful picture, "The Death of Cain"; there are 
Turner's "Durham Cathedral", Lord Leighton's 
"St. Jerome"; a portrait of Millais by Frank 
Holls; "Nature's Archway" by McWhirter; 
Millais's "Souvenir of Velasquez"; the "Vene- 
tian Lute-Player" of Mr. Abbey; Sir Lawrence 
Alma-Tadema's "Road to the Temple"; Sar- 
gent's "Interior in Venice"; Orchardson's "On 
The North Foreland"; the vigorous "On Strike" 
of Sir Hubert von Herkomer; the colossal car- 
toon depicting the meeting of Wellington and 
Bliicher after Waterloo; Sir John Gilbert's 
"Convocation of the Clergy"; a landscape from 
Gainsborough ; the portrait of Sir William Cham- 
bers, by Sir Joshua Reynolds; an enchanting 
"Morning" by Callcott; Turner's "Dolbaddern 
Castle." Wilkie, Maclise, Newton, Eastlake, 
Frith, Etty, John Collier, and numerous other 
Academicians are represented. 

117 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

To visit the Victoria and Albert Museum, and 
to study its vast and varied collections and ex- 
hibits in anything approaching an adequate 
way, is a task beside which any of the Seven 
Labors of Hercules sinks into comparative 
obscurity. The Theosophist might find in this 
undertaking an added argument for his rein- 
carnation theory, for surely no one lifetime is 
long enough for this tour of inspection. The 
Victoria and Albert is probably the least known 
and in some respects the best worth knowing 
of almost any museum in the world. The 
Musee Cluny in Paris is microscopic in com- 
parison; but of course there is no real basis of 
comparison, for while there are furniture, and 
appliances, and laces, and altar-pieces, spinets, 
virginals, boxes, screens, household implements, 
and an infinite variety of collections similar to 
those of the Cluny, it has what the Cluny has 
not, — an array of art that baffles all attempt 
at even enumeration, to say nothing of any de- 
scription. There are miles of pictures; there are 
tons of sculptures and ceramics; there are oil 
paintings, water-colors, sketches, drawings in 
chalk, in crayon, in ink; there are cartoons 
enough to encircle the globe, almost; there is 
an array of decorative work and a display of 
mural painting; and there are portraits, his- 
torical works, and every conceivable order of 

118 



NATIONAL GALLERIES OF ART 

art, from masterpieces of renowned excellence 
and entrancing beauty, to pictures or modeling 
of the most indifferent quality; there are tapes- 
tries, embroideries, stained glass, manuscripts, 
books, miniatures, paintings on ivory, daguerreo- 
types, mezzotints, rare pieces of music, photo- 
graphs, engravings; in fact, if there is an art 
or craft on earth that is not represented in the 
Victoria and Albert, it is yet to be discovered. 
There are three immense and definite collec- 
tions; the Jones, the lonides, and the Dyce 
and Forster. The picture galleries are easily 
divided into three sections of expositions, the 
oil paintings, the water-colors, and the Raphael 
cartoons. 

The gallery dates back to 1857, when it 
was initiated by a great bequest from Mr. 
John Sheepshanks; "and, among the rest, the 
ninety-five pictures and sketches by Constable, 
presented by Miss Isabel Constable; fifty- 
one works, largely of the French eighteenth- 
century school, which, with his collection 
of French furniture and porcelains, were be- 
queathed by Mr. John Jones; forty-nine pic- 
tures, largely historical, and some fifty literary 
portraits, by Reverend Alexander Dyce, and 
a similar number by John Forster; and a most 
complete and important collection of paint- 
ings of the Barbizon school presented by Mr. 

119 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

lonides." In fact, London claims that the Vic- 
toria and Albert is really entitled to be called 
the original "National Gallery of British Art", 
rather than the Tate Gallery, which takes to 
itself that title. 

Lady Dilke (whose name has a manifold in- 
terest as the undoubted original of Dorothea in 
George Eliot's " Middlemarch " ; as the wife of 
that strange and learned man, Mark Patison, 
sometime master of Balliol, after whose death 
she became the wife of Sir Charles Dilke), 
has written some of the most clever criticism 
and description of the French works in the Vic- 
toria and Albert, and criticism that no visitor 
can afford to miss. The French works include 
portraits of Marie Antoinette, and of Madame 
de Pompadour. 

The seven colossal cartoons from Raphael 
are among the great possessions of the Empire. 
Waagen, in a lengthy critique, regards them as 
"the most perfect works which Christian art 
has produced of a dramatic character, and of 
spirited and animated action." These cartoons 
were begun by Raphael in 1514 (six years be- 
fore his death), in the year in which he had been 
appointed architect to St. Peter's. The sub- 
jects are "Christ's Charge to Peter"; "The 
Death of Ananias"; "St. Peter and St. John 
Healing the Lame Man"; "Paul and Barnabas 

120 



NATIONAL GALLERIES OF ART 

at Lystra"; *'Elymas, the Sorcerer, Struck 
Blind"; "Paul Preaching at Athens", and " The 
Miraculous Draught of Fishes." These works 
are earnest interpretations of the spiritual 
energy of the disciples. They are luminous 
with truth. They are charged with moral ear- 
nestness and the power of uplifting the spirit. 
The history of these immortal canvases is 
rather curious. It seems they were sent to 
Arras, France, to be copied in tapestry for 
Pope Leo X, to be placed by him in the Sistine 
Chapel. After they had served this purpose, 
they were packed away in the manufactory, 
and left until, in 1720, they came to the notice 
of Rubens, who advised Charles I to purchase 
them. After his murder, they came into the 
possession of Cromwell. Following the Resto- 
ration they were placed for a time in Whitehall ; 
then, under William III, they were removed to 
Hampton Court. In 1764 they were placed in 
Buckingham Palace; still later they were taken 
to Windsor, from there to Frogmore, and again, 
in 1814, to Hampton Court, from whence they 
were brought to their permanent place in the 
Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensing- 
ton. Considering their migrations, they are in 
wonderfully good condition. 

The collection left to the nation by Con- 
stantine Alexander lonides includes over five 

121 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

hundred French and Italian paintings, among 
which are a "Coronation of the Virgin" which 
some critics contend is by Giotto; and a 
"Sibylla Persica" of great beauty and evi- 
dently of the Flemish school. 

Sir Edward Burne-Jones has given, in " The 
Mill", one of his most ethereal and perfect 
creations. Three girls, in all the splendor of 
youth and beauty, are seen dancing on the grass 
by a river; a musician with his violin is near; 
and in the background are the picturesque 
wheels of a mill-race, while groups of people 
are bathing in the water. 

In one room are many pictures by Rossetti, 
Lord Leighton, and Millais; with others by 
Ford Madox Brown, Cecil Lawson, North, 
Thomas Collier, and George Richmond. There 
are Frith's portrait of Charles Dickens at the 
age of forty-seven, — the gift of John Forster; 
Sir William Boxall's portrait of Walter Savage 
Landor, which was shown at the Royal Academy 
in 1853; Perugino's portrait of Forster him- 
self, and the first Earl of Lytton by Sir John 
Millais. Two designs on a large scale for 
stained-glass windows at St. Phillips, Birming- 
ham, the subjects being the "Nativity" and 
the "Crucifixion", by Burne-Jones, always 
attract all lovers of the beautiful; and Sir 
Edward's picture, "Love's Way-Farers", while 

122 



NATIONAL GALLERIES OF ART 

unfinished, is one of the works universally 
recognized. 

Volumes would fail to allow any mention in 
completeness of the resources of the Victoria 
and Albert. It is, in fact, this very aflBuence 
of resources, this embarrassment of riches, that 
appalls, if it does not repel the visitor. It is so 
vast as to seem impossible. The very prospect 
fatigues one, to say nothing of the distances to 
be traversed. Many of the beautiful objects 
of virtu are partially lost in the formal surround- 
ings. They are articles that find their proper 
setting only in a beautiful room, and not in 
the formal cases, or enclosures, of a museum, 
where they are divested of their own atmosphere. 
They are component details of splendid inte- 
riors, but when they are removed from those 
interiors and their natural surroundings, they 
lose in effect. The paintings are, as a rule, well 
placed, with as good light as can be secured in 
a city where daylight is a luxury. In a series 
of visits (for one visit alone would be of little 
importance in familiarizing the observer with 
this immense collection), much benefit may 
be derived from the wonderful Victoria and 
Albert Museum. 

Another of the lures of London is an art 
gallery that may well be termed an enchanted 

123 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

palace. Hertford House, that holds the Wallace 
Collection, is invested with an atmosphere 
of romance as well as of art. The story is 
almost as interesting as are the varied and 
wonderful works of this magnificent array of 
pictures, sculpture, miniatures, enamels, porce- 
lains, inlaid furniture; and rich and interesting 
bric-a-brac. 

Francis Charles, the third Marquis of Hert- 
ford, who died in 1842, was an acknowledged 
connoisseur, and to an already considerable col- 
lection of art that was a part of the estates, he 
added somewhat largely during his lifetime, 
and his additions were made with judgment and 
taste. It is currently said in London that this 
Lord Hertford was the original of Thackeray's 
Marquis of Steyne in "Vanity Fair." At all 
events, he had picturesque qualities, and when 
his son, Richard Seymour Conway, became the 
fourth Lord Hertford, he sustained and con- 
tinued the family custom of increasing the works 
of art. Born in 1800, he became an attache 
of the British Embassy in Paris at the early 
age of nineteen; later, he served as attache of 
the Embassy at Constantinople, for ten years. 
It was all in vain that the Order of the Garter 
was conferred upon him with the purpose of 
inducing him to remain in England. He had 
become enamored of continental life, and on 

124 



NATIONAL GALLERIES OF ART 

succeeding to the vast Hertford estates and an 
income of fifty thousand pounds a year, he 
established himself in Paris and devoted his 
life to artistic collection. To the great op- 
portunities that his residence in Paris afforded 
for the indulgence of his genius in this direction, 
for such unusual taste in selection as was Lord 
Hertford's could hardly be designated by any 
lesser name, were added the resources of vast 
wealth, a high degree of culture, and an almost 
instantaneous recognition of excellence in what- 
ever craft of artistic achievement he encountered. 

With him, as constant companion and protege, 
was a young man known in Paris as Monsieur 
Richard, and w^ho, as Richard Wallace (born 
in London in 1818), had been educated under the 
supervision of Maria, third Marchioness of 
Hertford, the mother of the present successor. 
Mr. Richard Wallace shared the tastes of the 
collector, and became a familiar figure among 
artists, connoisseurs, and dealers in Paris. 
He haunted the art world, and when he became 
associated with Lord Hertford as his constant 
companion and aid, his own competence in selec- 
tion was a not unimportant factor in the growth 
of the collection. Lord Hertford had a spacious 
private hotel near the Grand Boulevard, that 
was a treasure-house of art. 

The fourth Marquis of Hertford was a great 

125 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

friend of Louis Napoleon. He never married; 
he lived very quietly in his magnificent house 
in Paris, seeing only a few friends and not en- 
tering into any general society. At his death, 
in 1870, it was found he had bequeathed his en- 
tire possessions to Richard Wallace. These in- 
cluded Hertford House in Manchester Square in 
London, the Paris house, large estates in both 
England and Ireland, and the vast collections. 

Richard Wallace married Mademoiselle Cas- 
telnau, the daughter of a French officer. After 
his return to England, he was knighted, and 
he and Lady Wallace established themselves 
in Hertford House. They had one son, who 
died some five years after the death of Lord 
Hertford. Sir Richard received from the French 
Government the honor of the Cross of the 
Legion d'Honneur, and there were not wanting 
expectations, as well as natural desires, that 
he should bequeath to the Louvre this rich 
collection of art. It was devised, however, to 
Lady Wallace, in its absolute completeness; 
and on her death (in 1897), it was found she 
had bequeathed to the British nation this price- 
less inheritance. The bequest was accom- 
panied by the condition that the collection 
should be kept intact, and should be housed 
in a suitable building to display so varied an 
assemblage of artistic creations. For this pur- 

126 



NATIONAL GALLERIES OF ART 

pose Hertford House itself, with some addi- 
tions and modifications, furnished the best pos- 
sible accommodation. The story of the Wal- 
lace Collection thus becomes a romance of life 
as well as of art. 

Hertford House is a treasure-house of beauty, 
whose array fascinates the visitor and offers 
him such a tour amid matchless and luxurious 
loveliness as would well repay many a journey 
to enjoy. The quiet and refined elegance of a 
private residence has been happily preserved 
so far as possible, which makes these galleries 
unique in the entire world. 

The room which had been the boudoir of 
Lady Wallace is entirely hung with the works 
of Greuze, and its furniture, of the most ex- 
quisite inlaid work, came from the Petit Tria- 
non and belonged to Marie Antoinette. The 
rich carvings, the marvellous china, all of which 
are to be seen in the exhibit, reveal in the 
most realistic way the scale of splendor of the 
house as a private residence. There are many 
historic relics, such as the inkstand given to 
Marie Antoinette by Louis XV, and the hel- 
met of the Doge Mocenigo, of Venice. There is 
a fresco by Luini, whose subject is that of scenes 
from the boyhood of Pico della Mariandola. 
The pictures include the most adequate rep- 
resentation of three centuries of French art that 

127 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

can be found in the world outside the galleries 
of the Louvre. Not only is this representation 
valuable in itself, but, as it chances, it is pecul- 
iarly valuable to London, because it supplies 
the one omission (already noted in these pages) 
that is the defect of the National Gallery — the 
omission of the French art of the eighteenth 
century. 

Watteau is amply represented, as are Bou- 
cher, Greuze, Horace Vernet, Fragonard, and 
Delaroche. From these artists to Corot, Diaz, 
Rousseau, and Jean Frangois Millet and Rosa 
Bonheur, the line is unbroken. Corot's "Mac- 
beth and the Witches" is perhaps the most 
enthralling of all that master's works, with its 
almost supernatural beauty of the landscape, its 
weird, atmospheric effects, and the rarely poetic 
character of its loveliness and dramatic charm. 

There is a bust of Richard, fourth Marquis 
of Hertford, to whom all this wonderful array 
is due, and busts of Sir Richard Wallace and 
of Lady Wallace; bronze busts of several of the 
French kings, Houdon's Madame de Serilly, 
and various other sculptures, none of which, 
however, are of as high an order as the paint- 
ings and furniture. 

Thomas Sully's portrait of Queen Victoria 
in robes of state is here; von Angeli's Empress 
Frederick, and Bronzino's Eleanora di Toledo, 

128 



NATIONAL GALLERIES OF ART 

the wife of Cosimo I, of whom there is also 
a fine portrait in the UflSzi. 

There are two Gainsboroughs, the Perdita 
(Mrs. Robinson) and Miss Haverfield; several 
from Sir Joshua Reynolds, including that of 
Nelly O'Brien and Lady Frances Seymour, 
The haunting beauty of the Lady Blessington of 
Sir Thomas Lawrence is never forgotten; and 
Velasquez and Murillo, Andrea del Sarto and 
Luini, Canaletto, Rubens, Van Dyck, and 
others are represented in a bewildering series of 
masterpieces. 

The grand staircase in Hertford House was 
taken, in the days of Napoleon III, from the 
Bibliotheque Nationale, and the magnificent 
French pictures on either side make its ascent 
a triumphal progress. 

A writing-desk, of the most ingeniously in- 
tricate interior arrangements, with elaborate 
metal work by Riesener, and its marquetry by 
David, originally designed for Stanilaus, King 
of Poland, is of such intricate workmanship 
that it occupied nine years in construction and 
was completed in 1769. A wonderful table of 
metal with the top of green porphyry, decorated 
with gilt metal, is of the finest French work. 
A card receptacle of gilded metal, mounted 
on four eagles, which was owned by one of the 
Savoy princesses; an inkstand of rarest marbles, 

129 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

set in porphyry, bearing the arms of Pope 
Pius VI, by whom it was presented to Napoleon; 
some splendid Venetian chairs of state, from a 
palace of the Doges, and a cabinet of rarest 
beauty entrance the lingerer in one of the 
rooms. Strolling about, one comes upon a 
bewildering array of Boule furniture: tables, 
cabinets, chiffoniers, pedestals, and marriage 
chests, in rich carvings and priceless inlaid work. 
Two magnificent vases of Dresden porcelain 
are mounted in wrought metal work; there is a 
vast collection of china in lovely colors, — bleu 
de Roi, turquoise, vert pomme, and rose du 
Barry, with gold tracery. There are wonderful 
things in ebony; there is a profusion of Majolica, 
one plate of which belonged to Urbino, and is 
adorned with a painting of the "Triumph of 
Juno ", and another with the " Marriage of Cupid 
and Psyche." There are a set of plates from 
Fra Xanto (of the early years of the sixteenth 
century) painted with the "Birth of Venus", 
"Scylla and Glaucus", "Orpheus in Hades", 
and many other scenes from classic mythology. 
On one piece there is a high relief of the Virgin 
and Child, regarding which connoisseurs dis- 
pute as to whether it is by Luca della Robbia, 
or Andrea. From Faenza, from Palissy, are 
splendid examples; and of Limoges, there is a 
tazza painted with a scene showing the "Death 

130 



NATIONAL GALLERIES OF ART 

of Cleopatra"; one fruit dish, painted by Mar- 
tial Courtois, with Apollo and the Muses, with 
the most sumptuous border of arabesques; and 
an enamel casket, with portrait of Marguerite 
de France, is a sixteenth-century treasure. 
In Chinese enamel are two tall incense burners, 
of champleve and cloisonne, that charm one's 
very heart out of him in their breathless, be- 
wildering beauty. Yet one must continue to 
breathe, if only to study the bonbon-boxes, 
and snuff-boxes, and jewel caskets, and jewels 
themselves. The boxes are of onyx, translucent 
enamel, or gold, studded with precious stones; 
there is shown the knife, fork, and spoon be- 
longing to Cardinal Mazarin, all of gold richly 
modeled; a Burgundian necklace in silver and 
enamel, and the necklace of wrought ivory and 
gold presented to the Princesse de Lamballe 
by Marie Antoinette. The wonderful crystal 
and the glass are so ethereal that one half 
expects to see them vanish before the gaze. 

There is a great exliibit of French and Eng- 
lish miniatures, many of the subjects of historic 
fame; and the revelation of infinite possibil- 
ities in clock-making is astonishing. More 
than twenty of the utmost elaboration and in- 
genious construction are in this collection; one 
colossal astronomic clock is placed on the 
staircase, an instrument recording and an- 

131 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

nouncing a host of miscellaneous things con- 
nected with the seasons and chronological art, 
quite aside from the mere record of the time of 
day, — an instrument invented by Alexandre 
Portier, and executed by Stollewerck of Paris. 
Two musical clocks are calculated to provide 
continual harmony; one of these bears the name 
of Dallie, who is labeled as the horloger to Ma- 
dame la Dauphine. There are clocks adorned 
with every conceivable device, as the Fates, 
Love surveying Time, Science reading the Scroll 
of Life, and Love annulling Time. These are of 
ivory, of silver-gilt and transparent enamel, 
of ebony and gilt, and one of especial beauty is 
carved with figures of Neptune and Amphi- 
trite, while another is adorned with the figures 
of river gods. One clock, believed to be the 
design of Falconet, announces the flight of 
time by means of several figures that emerge 
on a round table, bearing a mirror, at which a 
woman is seated at her toilet, while an infant 
Cupid plays at her feet, and a girl standing near 
by offers masses of flowers. 

The mirrors, plaques, and candelabra are 
a study in themselves, one mirror especially 
being framed in green marble, of exquisite 
shadings, and mounted on a tripod of gilt 
bronze. There is a mirror in an ivory case, of 
early fifteenth-century work, the ivory carv- 

132 



NATIONAL GALLERIES OF ART 

ing being a dream of perfection. And a tab- 
ernacle of carved wood, Flemish art of the 
sixteenth century, is a wonderful object. The 
sculpture includes much of curious interest 
rather than of absolute artistic excellence, but 
numbers of the busts, statues, statuettes, and 
reliefs are invested with story, or associated with 
famous names, that fascinate the imagination. 

" The changes in the old house itself are not 
in the circumstances very great. The break- 
fast-room now contains French and English 
pictures of the nineteenth century. The four 
state rooms to the right hold the portraits of 
royalties, paintings of the early schools, the 
Limoges enamels, the Majolica, and the French 
furniture. . . . The charming oval drawing- 
room remains as it was;" says Mr. Spielman, 
*'it now contains the water-colors, while the 
small drawing-rooms display the great series 
of Canalettos, Guardis, furniture, and jewels. 

"The boudoir contains French works of the 
eighteenth century. The Oriental Armory is 
now a side-lighted gallery for the paintings of the 
Dutch school; the sleeping and dressing rooms 
have become exquisitely-shaped galleries for 
the masterpieces of Watteau, Pater, Fragonard, 
Boucher, Lancret, and their school. The east 
and north picture galleries remain the same, well 
adapted to the treasures whose beauty they 
heighten. And everywhere, — against every wall, 
in every corner, set out in the rooms themselves, 
— stands furniture of the most beautiful design 

133 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

and most exquisite perfection of workmanship; 
on every mantel and every table, ornaments 
and objects of art are placed, masterpieces every 
one, almost without exception. Nowhere may 
you see Riesener more brilliantly represented, 
and hardly at Windsor or in Buckingham 
Palace are Boulle and his school more superbly 
displayed. 

"Such is Hertford House as it stands to-day 
— a Mecca where every artistic soul shall 
find refreshment, and consolation, marvelling 
almost as much at the appreciation and energy 
that gathered these things together, as at the 
skill and taste of the artists of every craft who 
have brought mind and hand to such a pitch of 
Cultivation." 

The vast scale on which this remarkable col- 
lection has been made, the lavish expenditure 
of money, and the liberal and discriminating 
taste that gathered it, make this treasure-house 
one almost without precedent, and in many 
respects one that is unsurpassed. 

Another museum, one of relics, was opened in 
London in the spring of 1914 in Stafford House, 
which Sir William Bever beneficently gave to 
the nation for the use of the London Museum, 
as it is called. Mr. Guy Laking was chosen as 
the director. In the series of rooms on the first 
floor "the life of London unfolds itself from 
prehistoric times till the end of the fifteenth 
century," says a London critic; and so complete 

134 



NATIONAL GALLERIES OF ART 

is the labeling of each article that a catalogue 
is hardly needed, unless for purposes of future 
reference. On this floor lare arranged the gold 
and silver plate and the jewels, most of which 
is of seventeenth-century work, and of a rich- 
ness and beauty that surprise the beholder. 
Ascending to the famous reception rooms on the 
next floor, by the historic staircase, the curious 
relics of the times of the Tudors and the Stuarts 
are displayed in chronological continuity. Those 
of the Cromwell period are very ample, and the 
changes and progress of manners and customs 
in London, from the reign of Charles II to 
James II, are strikingly illustrated. The gal- 
leries are devoted to early Victorian days, with 
rooms full of splendid costumes and robes of state 
from the courts of Victoria and Edward VII. 

Stafford House has long been famous as one 
of the great houses of London, enshrined in 
political and social history. As the residence 
of the Duke and Duchess of Sutherland, hosts 
of distinguished guests were gathered under its 
roof, — Lord Shaftesbury, Lord John Russell, 
the Duke and Duchess of Argyle, Lord Palmer- 
ston, Mr. Gladstone, William Wilberforce, the 
philanthropist, and his son, the distinguished 
Bishop of Oxford; the Earl of Warwick, Ma- 
caulay, Hallam, Charles Kingsley, Mrs. Gaskell, 
Thackeray, and other celebrities of the mid- 
135 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

Victorian era. Stafford House is on the edge of 
St. James Park, opposite Buckingham Palace. 
The grounds are very beautiful, with their 
emerald turf, and in the spring the masses of 
lilacs and azaleas give the most brilliant aspect 
to the place. Most of the rooms were hung in 
green damask, with much furniture of white 
and gold, and in each window stood a great oval 
basket of primroses, or other flowers, banks of 
violets, tea roses, or the starry narcissus. Over 
one mantel there was formerly Landseer's 
portrait of the two children of the Duke and 
Duchess, the Marquis of Stafford and Lady 
Levison Gower, later Lady Blantyre. Every 
room was rich in pictures and sculpture. A 
portrait of a former Duchess of Sutherland by Sir 
Thomas Lawrence was a notable feature, and the 
picture gallery, at the head of the grand stair- 
case, was considered one of the most famous pri- 
vate galleries in Europe. The approach from 
the broad stairs, carpeted in glowing scarlet 
that contrasted with the gilded balustrade, with 
statues gleaming whitely on the landings, en- 
hanced the picture. The gallery was decorated 
with mural paintings by Paul Veronese. Among 
the works were two superb Murillos, which had 
been taken from Spanish convents by Marshal 
Soult. There was a "Christ before Caiaphas", 
by a Flemish artist; another picture, not par- 

136 



NATIONAL GALLERIES OF ART 

ticularly cheerful in its scene, was that of an 
Earl of Strafford being led to execution. 

The new museum now established in Stafford 
House is essentially of relics. In the City, some 
time ago, there was discovered a box that had 
been buried, containing a unique collection of 
seventeenth-century jewelry, that is exhibited 
here. There are rings, chains, pendants, watches, 
part of a Communion service in crystal and 
gold, and toilet bottles, trays, and other arti- 
cles, some three hundred and fifty pieces in all, 
many of which are duplicates. There is a cameo 
portrait of Queen Elizabeth, delicately carved, 
and a crucifix of the time of Charles I. 

The archaeologist would hardly suppose that 
any part of his happy hunting-grounds would 
lie in Piccadilly Circus, but shortly before this 
museum was opened, a wonderful group of 
implements and weapons of the Bronze Age 
was discovered there. The Neolithic articles in- 
clude bronze swords, some of which were also 
found in Millwall and Wandsworth. Many of 
the mediaeval relics date back from the thir- 
teenth to the sixteenth centuries. There are 
shown the arms of Henry VIII, Edward I, 
of Mary, and of Elizabeth, and the warrant for 
the arrest and the execution of the Earl of 
Northumberland, signed by Queen EHzabeth, 
is here, as is also the proclamation made for 

137 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

the resumption of relations with Spain, after 
the defeat of the Armada. Cromwell's Bible 
inscribed with his signature, and the journal of 
the House of Commons, from 1583 to 1650, 
are other objects of keen interest. 

The array of costumes is enriched by the 
generous gift from Mrs. Abbey of all the his- 
torical costumes used by Mr. Abbey in his nu- 
merous series of historic paintings and his mural 
work. The costumes that were used in the series 
of the Holy Grail for the decoration of the 
Public Library in Boston are particularly rich 
and interesting. 

The post-chaise used by the Duke of Welling- 
ton at the Battle of Waterloo is shown; and 
there are many remarkable documents of the 
Stuarts, of no little value to antiquarians. In 
fact, the color and romance of the great metrop- 
olis for centuries past may now be studied in 
the London Museum in Stafford House. 

The British Museum is so vast and so uni- 
versally known that it needs no description. 
To those familiar with its contents, no comment 
could possess the slightest claim to adequacy; 
and to those who are not, an encyclopaedia of 
comment could hardly convey an adequate idea 
of the great reality. The department of printed 
books is rivaled only by the Bibliotheque in 

138 



NATIONAL GALLERIES OF ART 

Paris and contains already over two million 
volumes, with an average addition of fifty 
thousand a year. There are forty miles of book- 
shelves; and the hospitalities to such readers 
as are admitted are princely. 

The illuminated manuscripts range from the 
tenth to the sixteenth century and include 
Boccaccio's "Decameron", Plutarch's "Lives", 
the "Ethics" of Aristotle in Spanish, and a vast 
array of the Byzantine school; the Oriental de- 
partment is bewilderingly rich in the most 
rare and wonderful treasures, the Buddhist 
sculpture being one feature of tremendous 
import; and the ancient manuscripts, the auto- 
graphs of the celebrities of almost every age; 
the immense bequest of Baron Rothschild 
of plate, enamels, jewels, carvings, crystal, 
bronzes, faience (a collection valued at a mil- 
lion and a half dollars); the series of Egyptian, 
Assyrian, and Roman antiquities; the Ephesus 
Room; the Elgin Marbles, the Babylonian antiq- 
uities, the discoveries made in South America, 
Mexico, and Central America; the Bronze 
Room, the gruesome mummy cases, — all these 
defy any attempt at ordinary description. The 
ascent of the stairs is made interesting by the 
line of strange sculptures brought from the 
Buddhist Topa (in 1845); and the Lydian col- 
lection, in an inner hall, which Sir Charles 

139 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

Fellows brought from the ruins of Xanthus, 
invites endless study. Among the latter is the 
tomb of the Satrap Piafa, with its roof, and many 
statues and reliefs. The Roman and Anglo- 
Roman antiquities comprise thousands of busts, 
statues, fragments, urns, tombs, and vases; and 
the three spacious Graeco-Roman rooms offer 
some of the finest specimens of archaic sculpt- 
ure in the world. Here one may see the Harpy 
Tomb, supposed to be that of a Prince of Lycia: 
and the group of ten seated figures, with a lion 
and a sphinx brought from the Sacred Way. 
The Elgin Room is perhaps the most interesting 
of all to the student of the classics, offering as 
it does the greatest masterpieces of Grecian 
art. A model of the Parthenon shows to the 
visitor the exact position and inter-relation of 
these statues. The friezes and metopes of the 
Parthenon decorate the room. The horses in 
these creations seem to prance and fly, and 
the observer can but agree with Flaxman that 
they seem actually alive. The Elgin Marbles 
take rank in the greatest art of the world, and 
alone repay a visit to London. It is an anomaly, 
but not less true, that to see Grecian art at its 
best one visits London rather than Athens. 
The Hellenic Room, the Assyrian galleries, the 
Egyptian galleries, all form a series that offer 
so stupendous a display that the effect is over- 

140 



NATIONAL GALLERIES OF ART 

powering, and many visits are essential to any 
adequate appreciation of their greatness. The 
room called the King's Library contains the 
volumes collected by George III, and presented 
by George IV. The Medal Room is only occa- 
sionally shown ; the Print Room has a large col- 
lection of sketches from the great masters. The 
reading-room of the museum is over one hundred 
feet in height, surmounted by the huge dome, 
and is nearly one hundred and fifty feet in diam- 
eter. All this Bloomsbury region, in which the 
British Museum is situated, was once a fash- 
ionable residence part of London, and chron- 
icles record that '* foreign princes were carried 
to see Bloomsbury Square as one of the wonders 
of England." In this region lived the Dukes 
of Bedford, Lord Russell, the Earl of Chester- 
field, Sir Thomas Lawrence, and Sir Hans 
Sloane; and it is natural that the British Museum 
(built in 1823-1847) should have been located 
here. It is built on the site of the famous 
Montagu House, mentioned by Macaulay. 

All these great museums of London constitute, 
of themselves, a feature that draws tens of 
thousands of visitors and special students and 
scholars every year to London, for the unsur- 
passed, and in many instances unrivaled, privi- 
leges that they offer. 



141 



CLUBS, SOCIETIES, AND MOVEMENTS 

"Let a man contend to the uttermost 
For his life's set prize, be it what it will!" 

Bbownino. 

"Wisdom is like electricity. There is no permanently wise man, but 
men capable of wisdom, who, being put into certain company, or other 
favorable conditions, become wise for a short time, as glasses rubbed 
acquire electric power for a while." 

Embbson. 

London is the earthly paradise of clubs, and 
perhaps with equal truth it might be affirmed 
that her club life is the earthly paradise of 
London, from the regions of Mayfair to the 
portals of some outer Bohemia. There are clubs 
of every conceivable social degree, and almost 
every movement crystallizes into what is virtu- 
ally or actually a club organization. This is to 
say that every special aim or form of life in 
London takes on organization. The Carlyle 
Club, in Piccadilly, whose name would suggest 
a special devotion to the philosophy of Teufels- 
drockh is, instead, a particularly free arena, in 
which every conceivable trend of thought and 
personal opinion may be discussed with the free- 
dom of a private home. The Carlyle is but just 

142 



CLUBS, SOCIETIES, AND MOVEMENTS 

opened in the early summer of 1914, and its 
habitues declare with pardonable enthusiasm 
that it is *'the final word in clubs." The con- 
trast, at all events, between the superb luxury of 
the Carlyle and the refined but quiet elegance of 
the Athenaeum, and the difference between the 
ideal of club life held in the mid-Victorian era 
and that of the second decade of the twentieth 
century, is an unerring indicator of the distance 
(for good or ill) that the world has traveled 
within the past three quarters of a century. 
What would Sydney Smith and Carlyle himself 
have thought of this club that bears the phi- 
losopher's name, with its forty-one telephones, 
several of which may be connected with the 
electrophone, enabling members to sit in easy 
chairs and listen, with the receiver at their 
ears, to concert, opera, or drama? At this club 
Radical and Tory meet and mingle with free- 
dom, and the only law, apparently, is that un- 
written law invariably observed, and seldom 
specified, by gentlemen. The sportsman is wel- 
comed, and wit and wisdom are by no means 
refused. The yearly fee is seventy-five dollars, 
after which the member may avail himself of 
whatever joys he is able to extract from soli- 
tude or from companionship. He may indulge 
in the one or the other. The rarefied atmos- 
phere of the Athenaeum might illy accord with 

143 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

a deal on the stock exchange, but if a financial 
clairvoyant discerns that by a call through his 
telephone he may be able to add a million or 
two to his worldly estate, there is no objection 
to achieving this "unearned increment" in the 
midst of these luxurious surroundings. The 
Carlyle is exceedingly "smart." The location, 
close to Piccadilly Circus (which is to the Lon- 
doner the center from which the modern Archi- 
medes might not unsuccessfully undertake to 
move the earth), is most convenient; and the 
entrance hall, with its baronial appointments, 
would strike terror to the heart of John Stuart 
Mill. The Carlyle Room is almost as splendid 
in its mural paintings from scenes of the 
French Revolution, its pictures from Whistler 
and other great artists, its rich and tasteful 
appointments, as the Hall of the Doges in 
Venice. There is a bust of Carlyle, and whether 
the club is devoted to following his vigorous 
counsel and frugal example, or not, his fame is 
a decorative asset which is properly appreciated. 
The visitor can but smile at this sarcasm of 
destiny. The feminine visitor is by no means 
excluded from the sumptuous Carlyle. There is 
a special drawing-room set apart for lovely 
woman, in the inclusiveness of wives or daugh- 
ters of the members. Here she may bring invited 
guests to tea and repose herself at odd intervals 

144 



CLUBS, SOCIETIES, AND MOVEMENTS 

of shopping and driving. With all this charmed 
life which she is entreated to enter into and 
adorn, it is a little singular that she should, in 
certain extraordinary instances, prefer to chain 
herself to iron railings, or lie in wait for the 
sadly-burdened and perplexed Premier on the 
steps of Parliament, adding to his cares of 
state a condition to which history furnishes no 
precedent. 

Every social phase is also a question of the 
** right people", but there are equally numerous 
points of view from which this social quality 
is appraised. There are magic circles sacred 
to the select few; but far more in evidence is a 
certain largeness and liberality of inclusiveness 
which, in the same degree, is hardly to be found 
in any of the other great capitals of the world. 
This is by no means because the Londoner 
estimates himself from any standard of greater 
humility; au contraire. His position is so se- 
curely appointed by the goddess of Destiny; 
it is so absolutely recognized by every one 
whose recognition is of any value, that he can 
well afford to be a law unto himself under the 
general rule that where MacGregor sits, there 
is the head of the table. Other cities may de- 
liberate as to whether society and the stage 
can approach each other any more nearly than 
in the juxtaposition across the footlights. But 

145 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

if London hostesses find a celebrated artist of 
either drama or opera socially desirable, with 
wit, charm, esprit, that artist is quite eligible 
to dinner invitations. A danseuse, whose grace 
had fascinated all London, was invited, within 
a few years, to lunch at the house of the Pre- 
mier, with several distinguished people to 
meet her, among whom, it was discreetly 
whispered in West End drawing-rooms, there 
was a celebrated prelate of the church. The 
Golden Book is ever opened for fresh inscrip- 
tions. Good society is so absolutely its own 
law-giver that no merely incidental social phe- 
nomena could by any means affect it. Emerson 
remarks that the solar system has no anxiety 
about its reputation, and Mayfair and Belgravia 
manifest quite as little. Moreover, the best 
social life in London is apt to deserve that spe- 
cial distinction in other than merely conven- 
tional terms. It is a society of cultivated people. 
It is a society that has been both born to cul- 
ture and which has achieved culture. It is 
composed of people of wide and varied interests. 
They are people with whom conversation has its 
significance and is not made up of inanities. 
The man or woman who can contribute to 
conversation a fresh interest is welcomed. A 
great singer, dramatic artist, or musician, who 
has also an agreeable and refined personality, 

146 



CLUBS, SOCIETIES, AND MOVEMENTS 

has the prestige of his art which is as justly 
recognized as prestige of any other order. 

The club-houses of Pall Mall have long been 
a noted feature of London. They have made 
that street a thoroughfare of palaces. The 
Athenaeum, the Army and Navy, the Travellers, 
the Marlborough, the New Oxford and Cam- 
bridge, the Carlton, are among the most deci- 
sive factors of the day in the making of public 
opinion. From Trafalgar Square to Grosvenor 
Crescent, Pall Mall is invested with an historic 
and romantic atmosphere. In Suffolk Street, 
near Pall Mall East, is the Gallery of British 
Artists; in Warwick Street, adjacent, stood 
Warwick House, where Princess Charlotte was 
ordered by her father to remain in residence; 
passing the foot of Haymarket and Waterloo 
Place, with its high column surmounted by 
a statue of the Duke of York, and with a group 
of sculpture including statues of Sir John Frank- 
lin, Lord Lawrence, Lord Clyde (Colin Camp- 
bell), and Sir John Fox Burgoyne, one comes 
upon the Athenaeum Club, whose house was 
built in 1829, with a symbolic announcement 
of the wit and wisdom supposed to especially 
prevail here in the shape of a statue of Minerva 
adorning its front. This literary organization 
is further enriched by a library held to be the 
largest and finest club library in the world; a 

147 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

bust of Milton, bequeathed by Anthony Trol- 
lope, is among its treasures. The Athenaeum 
club-house is of Grecian architecture, and the 
frieze in the main salon is a copy of that of the 
Parthenon. In 1830, when the club was inau- 
gurated, they gave a series of ladies' nights, 
lasting through two weeks, the receptions being 
from nine to twelve, the feminine guests repre- 
sentative of the peerage and the nobility, — 
and of wit, learning, and fashion. The mem- 
bership of the Athenaeum includes cabinet 
ministers, ecclesiastics, artists of renown, liter- 
ary men, scientists, poets, inventors, and men 
who have distinguished themselves in public 
service. Sydney Smith, Carlyle, Cardinal Man- 
ning, Sir Richard Burton, Lord Tennyson, 
Drummond Wolfe, Lord Leighton, Laurence 
Oliphant, Lord Beaconsfield, Lord Salisbury, 
Macaulay, who wrote much of his history of 
England in this club; Faraday, who "made it 
his home", it is currently said, for a great part 
of the time, and Anthony Trollope, Kinglake, 
and Charles Matthews were all members. 
Sir Henry Irving was always welcomed as a 
guest, and Robert Barrett Browning, the son 
of the poets, was a member, a fact of which he 
was proud, and his cards always bore this ad- 
dress. It is said that Laurence Oliphant, a 
man of especially fascinating manners, met 

148 



CLUBS, SOCIETIES, AND MOVEMENTS 

Lord Salisbury, who was greatly interested in 
this brilliant thinker, at the Athenaeum, was 
invited by him to Hatfield and introduced to 
the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII. 

The Army and Navy Club is also one of 
great distinction. Among the interesting ob- 
jects in their house is a piece of Gobelin tapestry 
that belonged to Napoleon I, and was presented 
to the club by Napoleon III, in remembrance 
of the charming way in which he had been en- 
tertained there. They also own a miniature of 
Lady Hamilton that was found on Lord Nel- 
son's desk in his cabin after Trafalgar. 

The Carlton Club, also in Pall Mall, is strictly 
conservative as to party; the Marlborough is 
distinguished for social preeminence; the Oxford 
and Cambridge are famous for great scholars; the 
Reform Club is of the Liberals; the Travellers' 
has for its president, at date, the Marquis of 
Sarzano, and it has an especially interesting 
membership, including explorers, discoverers, 
and men of adventure in all lines. Several 
other clubs have their houses in this notable 
street, which is the thoroughfare from Trafalgar 
Square and from Westminster to Buckingham 
Palace. 

One of the first beginnings of club life was 
when Sir Robert Cotton, living in Old Palace 
Yard, made his splendid mansion a place of 

149 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

meeting and placed his matchless library at the 
disposal of the habitues. St. Stephen's, which 
dates from 1790, was a club for the Members 
of Parliament, and became under Bellamy a 
proprietary club. It is famed for its dinner- 
parties, and while devoted to precedent, is 
yet one of the leading club organizations to 
adopt and promote the newest and most revo- 
lutionary changes in club life. In the House 
of Lords club life initiated itself during the 
last years of the nineteenth century, and in 
1904 the rooms were increased in number, 
Edmund Gosse, poet and critic, was made li- 
brarian, and there were installed telephones, 
abundant electric light, a bountiful supply of 
the daily papers, the periodicals, and a good 
restaurant. 

The National Club, in Whitehall Gardens, 
opens its committee meetings with prayer, and 
has a special prayer-meeting at two o'clock 
every Monday afternoon. Among its members 
are Lord Balfour and the Bishops of Durham, 
Newcastle, Khartoum, and Inverclyde; men 
of letters are represented by Arthur Christo- 
pher Benson, Maurice Hewlett, Edmund Gosse, 
and Austin Dobson. 

The Garrick (founded in 1831) still maintains 
its ancient fame and has its house in Garrick 
Street, Covent Garden. It has a notable col- 

150 



CLUBS, SOCIETIES, AND MOVEMENTS 

lection of pictures and traditions of a brilliant 
membership, — Thackeray, Yates, Richard Bent- 
ley, Longman, John Murray, and others, and 
the author of the Ingoldsby Legends, who was a 
witty and favorite canon of St. Paul's. 

The Arts, in Dover Street, was formerly in 
Hanover Square, in a fine old Georgian mansion 
with a magnificent oak staircase, and ceilings 
painted by Angelica Kauffmann; its member- 
ship has included Tom Hughes, Charles Dick- 
ens, Dante Gabriel and William Michael Ros- 
setti, George Meredith, Wilkie Collins, Algernon 
Charles Swinburne, Whistler, Val Prinsep, Cal- 
deron, du Maurier, and Lord Leighton, to whom 
the club gave a magnificent dinner on the occa- 
sion of Leighton's becoming the president of 
the Royal Academy. Perugini, still a member, 
just missed, it is said, being one of the first 
original members. Dean Stanley, as the guest 
of Hughes, once met Dickens at this club, and 
John Everett Millais, Charles Reade, and other 
well-known men were also among its members. 

The Arundel (now in Adelphi Terrace) was 
founded by Frank Talfourd, the son of Field 
Talfourd, whose portraits of Robert and Eliza- 
beth Barrett Browning, in pencil drawing, 
are in the National Portrait Gallery. The 
Arundel is rich in choice engravings and rare 
manuscripts. 

151 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

The Century Club has a distinguished mem- 
bership, which included John Stuart Mill, 
John Forster (the biographer of Dickens), 
John Bright, Seymour Haden, the distinguished 
etcher, and Sir Charles Dilke. Oscar Brown- 
ing is one of the present members, and Mr. 
Browning is often begged to relate reminiscences 
of the interesting people who have been among 
his personal friends. He knew George Eliot 
in long intimacy, together with Herbert Spencer, 
Dr. Jowett, Lord Tennyson, and many others 
of whom the world delights to hear, as they re- 
cede from contemporary life into an historic past. 

The twentieth century sees the club feminine 
flourishing with increasing popularity, and the 
women's clubs of London are legion. The La- 
dies' Athenaeum, in Dover Street, had the signal 
honor of having as its president, H. R. H., 
Princess Louise (Duchess of Argyle),with Mrs. 
Humphry Ward as vice-president; while the 
membership has included Lady Frances Bal- 
four, Lady Herbert, Mrs. Richard Strachey, 
Lady Randolph Churchill, Mrs. Bedford Fen- 
wick, the Marchioness of Ripon, and Mrs. 
W. K. Clifford. The qualifications for mem- 
bership are original contributions, as either 
books or magazine articles, and the basis of 
the club is that of artistic, literary, and ethical 
tastes and sympathies, or political interests. 

152 



CLUBS, SOCIETIES, AND MOVEMENTS 

The Lyceum is the only International women's 
club in the world. Founded in London, it has 
affiliated branches in Paris, Berlin, Stock- 
holm, Milan, Rome, Florence, Geneva, Brussels, 
Athens, and in Melbourne. In Paris it has a 
magnificent house, which was built by an Italian 
prince for his own residence, and its interior 
splendor, with solid mahogany doors, rich carv- 
ings, and mural paintings, is the admiration 
of every visitor. The president of the Paris 
Lyceum is the Duchesse d'Uzes, one of the 
most brilliant of French women. Mrs. Frank 
H. Mason, the wife of the former American 
Consul-General, is one of the leading mem- 
bers of the Paris branch, and the London club 
is honored by the presidency of Lady Frances 
Balfour, one of the most witty and incisive 
of speakers. The club-house is in Piccadilly 
near Park Lane, — a spacious mansion four 
stories in height, of which the two upper floors 
are given over to private rooms for resident 
guests. On the street floor is a fine writing- 
room, with all the daily papers and most of 
the weeklies and periodicals, with an abundance 
of writing-desks, and small tables; and on this 
floor are also exhibition rooms for the use of 
arts and crafts, committee rooms, and others; 
on the second floor are the drawing-rooms and 
dining-room; and the library is more retired, 

153 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

located on the third floor, at the back of the 
house. The Lyceum has hundreds of mem- 
bers, representing many nationahties. Its quali- 
fications for membership are original work in 
literature, art, or science. In London (as else- 
where) the club divides itself into groups, ac- 
cording to the special interests, and meetings 
and discussions, with dinners in honor of no- 
tables. One of the Indian members. Miss Cor- 
nelia Sorabji, occupies an important position 
under the government of India, which she fills 
with conspicuous ability. The Lyceum has 
a large proportion of members who have dis- 
tinguished themselves in one way or another; in 
fact, achievement is the foundation of admit- 
tance to its membership; and both to resident 
and non-resident members it offers unusual 
advantages. 

The Empress Club, whose house is in Dover 
Street, is extremely "smart", and its members 
are exclusively those who have been presented 
at court, and are of the court circle. It has a 
large out-of-town list of members, as its facil- 
ities for temporary sojourning when in London 
are of the most delightful order. 

The University Club is distinctive in that a 
majority of the members have taken a first class, 
or a double first at their colleges; the Ladies* 
Twentieth Century, with rooms in Stanley 

154 



CLUBS, SOCIETIES, AND MOVEMENTS 

Gardens; the Lyric at which, in place of a 
library, the members avail themselves of fre- 
quent lectures by various masculine celebrities; 
the Society of American Women in London, 
whose meeting-place is in South Audley Street, 
and of whom Mrs. W. R. Comings is the presi- 
dent at date, and which, though not exactly 
a club, has many of the conveniences of one, 
and the Sesame Club, with rooms in Dover 
Street, are all of note. The origin of the latter 
is to be traced in Ruskin's "Sesame and Lilies." 
Here after a brilliant dinner early in the spring 
of 1914, there was a lecture by Mr. H. G. Wells, 
who discussed the possibilities of foretelling 
the future. Adjourning from the dining-room, 
people sat on the stairs and stood in doorways, 
and were appreciative, apparently, of any 
modicum of space, quite irrespective of air. 
But this is quite on the cards when Mr. Wells 
appears to speak in any place. 

The Occult Club has rooms in Piccadilly 
Place, with a large library of the literature of 
this order; a tea-room, and a small lecture hall, 
whose hospitalities are as broad as the universe, 
and which (is this a tribute to occult power .^ 
a practical demonstration.'^), by some mysterious 
dispensation, can be made to hold twice as many 
people as the space would seem designed to ac- 
commodate. The Thursday afternoon lectures 

155 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

are very attractive, it would appear, by the 
promptness with which an ardent audience fills 
every available space. 

The felicitous management of the Honorable 
Secretary, Mrs. J. C. Martin, is a factor of 
incalculable value. The speakers are invari- 
ably those of special interest, and two recent 
lectures by the famous Swedish scholar and 
author. Miss Lind-Af-Hageby, on the "Psychic 
Superhuman", were widely noted and com- 
mented upon in the London press. There is 
no more brilliant or picturesque figure in Lon- 
don than this eminent thinker who devotes her 
time and energies and her exceptional gifts 
to various causes for the great end of social 
betterment. 

The Futurist Club was inaugurated in the 
spring of 1914 to meet the apparent demand 
for the "superman" and his feminine comple- 
ment. The Futurist has established itself in 
Great Ormund Street, Russell Square, near the 
British Museum, and its salon is designed to 
fitly convey to the visitor the peculiar emotions 
(or lack of emotion) of the club, by a color 
scheme; the walls are yellow, the doors red, and 
the ceiling is suggestive of the vesture of 
Hamlet's father's ghost, — "a thing of shreds 
and patches." On the walls there are unac- 
countable red and orange splashes, at irregular 

156 



CLUBS, SOCIETIES, AND MOVEMENTS 

and incalculable intervals, which the initiate 
interpret as standing for ideas. This official 
abiding-place of Futurists, Cubists, Fortunists, 
Vorticists, and Experimentalists has for its 
high-priest Wyndham Lewis, of Cubist fame, 
well-merited. Every Saturday afternoon there 
is a social gathering to which any one is wel- 
comed who is in temperamental harmony with 
the Unknowable, the Inexplicable, and the 
Unfathomable. The evenings are mostly de- 
voted to lectures and discussions and various 
propaganda of the theories which are held to 
be the regeneration of the planet. The princi- 
ples of the transformed arts are duly exploited. 
It is demonstrated that they must be r^z;olu- 
tionary, not ^2;olutionary. The Futurists were 
fortunate in their capture of a celebrity in 
Monsieur Leon Ornstein, the composer, who is 
the son of a Russian priest, and who, ten years 
ago, when only a lad of nine, played at a concert 
in St. Petersburg. "My aim in life," remarked 
M. Ornstein, "is to drag people out of their pre- 
conceived notions, . . . imitation has well been 
religiously regarded as a waste of time. We 
show the value of impressions. An impression of 
the Thames is all that the Thames is to London." 
M. Ornstein explained regarding the Futurist 
music that he was one morning awakened to 
hear unfamiliar chords ringing in his ears, and 

157 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

at first feared that he was going out of his mind. 
Later he recognized it as constituting a mass, 
being interpreted by many instruments. The 
London society has instituted a monthly paper 
to be their organ of expression which is appro- 
priately named the Blast, and has the honor of 
being published by John Lane. 

The Futurist Club proposes nothing less than 
the complete revolution of all the existing schools 
of music, poetry, painting, sculpture, archi- 
tecture, and philosophy, by which it may be 
inferred that it does not take any slight esti- 
mate of its compelling power. So far as can 
be gathered, it relies largely on what it terms 
"dynamic declamation" to produce this grand 
and inconceivable transformation scene. The 
Futurist is not in any outward affiliation with 
the Paris " Societe des Opti7nistes'\ but is hospi- 
table to much of the ground covered by that 
organization, whose objects, according to M. 
d'Avesne, are the new means for discovering and 
developing sources of energy; new discoveries 
in science and art; the emancipation of women, 
and the increase of all that makes for human 
happiness. 

The Poetry Club of London does not aim 
at the overthrow of the existing universe; but 
is content to enjoy now and then a twofold 
feast, in a dinner at the Cafe Monico and an 

158 



CLUBS, SOCIETIES, AND MOVEMENTS 

address on its special theme. At one of these 
recent banquets where an unconscionable array 
of the luxuries of the table accompanied the 
"flow of soul". Lord Dunsany read a paper 
on "Fairy Poetry", in which he declared that 
poetry was designed "as the cloistral refuge 
for those who would escape the paralyzing 
influence of the commercialism of life." He 
deplored the fact, as he conceived it to be, 
that knowledge was driving out wisdom and 
information. The Poetry Club had offered a 
gold medal for the annual "best poem", which 
was adjudged to Mr. John Gurdon for a poem 
entitled "Before the Fates." In harmony with 
the Poetry Club is the Poetry Book-Shop, in 
Devonshire Street, presided over by Mr. Harold 
Monro, the editor of Poetry and Drama, an 
attractive quarterly. The book-shop is not 
unlike a small club in itself, having private 
rooms for a half dozen or so of the young men 
most interested, where weekly lectures are given. 
Among the speakers of the series are Henry 
Newbolt, Wilfrid Gibson, Maurice Hewlett, 
and Mr. Abercrombie. Edmund Gosse has ad- 
dressed an audience of over two hundred that 
crowded into the "shop" on the theme of 
"Nineteenth Century Poets"; Basil Watt has 
discoursed on Elizabethan poetry, and Lascelles 
Abercrombie has recited his poem entitled "The 

159 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

End of the World." The Italian Futurists are to 
have representation, too, for Mr. Monro is about 
to publish a collection of their translations. 

The Buddhist Society, in Buckingham Street, 
off the Strand, is an association of learned 
men who have founded the society in order to 
promote not only a wider knowledge of Bud- 
dhism, but also the study of Sanscrit literature. 
The meetings are held every Sunday evening, 
and on "Buddha Day" (May ninth), a special 
meeting is held for notable addresses. The 
society is under the patronage of the King of 
Siam; the president is Professor Edmund J. 
Mills, D.Sc, LL.D., F.'R.S.; and among the 
vice-presidents are the celebrated Oriental 
scholar. Doctor Rhys Davids, the Earl of Mex- 
borough, and his Excellency, Paya Sudham 
Maitri. It is this society that publishes The 
Buddhist Review^ one of the eminent maga- 
zines of ethics. On the latest Buddha Day one 
of the addresses was made by a celebrated 
Oriental, Mr. Ameresekera, of Ceylon, who ex- 
plained the Eight-fold Path of Buddhism as 
being the "noble way of right-knowing, right 
intentions, right speech, action, living, en- 
deavor, recollection, and concentration." Love, 
enthusiasm, and courage were the essentials. 

Buddha, too, seems to have been something 
of a Futurist, in his proclaiming of change as 

160 



CLUBS, SOCIETIES, AND MOVEMENTS 

the law of existence. "In the last watch of 
the night when Buddha attained enlighten- 
ment," said one speaker on "Buddha Day", 
at the London meeting, "he realized the abso- 
lute truth about the universe. He told us 
that our entire progress toward peace rested 
with ourselves. The essential teaching of Bud- 
dhism is love," said the speaker. 

From the Indian Art and Dramatic Society- 
has sprung a new club known as the " Union 
of East and West", of which Sir Oliver Lodge, 
Lord Howard de Walden, Sir Charles Wynd- 
ham. Sir Mancherjee Bhownagree, the Chinese 
Minister to Great Britain, and others of emi- 
nence are members, and which has for its object 
the promotion of cordial relations among all 
divisions of mankind without regard to color, 
race, or creed, "and in particular to encourage a 
good understanding between East and West." 
This club offers a series of dramatic entertain- 
ments of which the opening one, given in the 
Grafton Galleries, was a comedy entitled TJie 
Maharani of Arakan, in one act, the motive 
of which was the story of the distinguished poet 
of India, Rabindranath Tagore. 

The "Duty and Discipline" movement, with 
the secretary's office in Victoria Street, and the 
annual meeting held at the residence of Lord 
Aberconway, in Belgrave Square, the Earl of 

161 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

Meath presiding, is one of the most effective 
and admirable organizations for the betterment 
of the youth of England. The objects of the 
"Duty and Discipline" movement are to aid in 
overcoming that fatal tendency to lawlessness, 
and to inspire a reasonable obedience to legiti- 
mate authority, and to combat softness, slack- 
ness, indifference, and indiscipline, and to 
stimulate discipline and a sense of duty and 
alertness throughout the national life, especially 
during the formative period of home and school 
training. 

Other valuable work for social betterment is 
done by the Passmore Edwards Settlement, 
at which the Jowett Memorial lecture was de- 
livered by Professor Gilbert Murray, of Oxford, 
the Regius Professor of Greek, and the celebrated 
translator of Euripides. Doctor Bossanquet, 
in the chair, lent additional interest to this ad- 
dress on the conception of another life. Doctor 
Murray pointed out that there is constantly 
with us another life which is more our own than 
that of the visible world, and that this life 
is not delayed until after death, but is with us 
now and here. 

The Fabian Society lives and increases in 
strength of purpose, and perhaps in membership 

162 



CLUBS, SOCIETIES, AND MOVEMENTS 

as well. At their rooms in the Strand various 
new and edifying doctrines are continually set 
forth, and it is an interesting clientele who 
gather here. 

The Hardwicke Society, which has for its 
object various national issues, meets in the 
Inner Temple, and an especial ladies' night this 
past season was made somewhat memorable by 
the clever address of the Honorable Lady 
Barlow, who had happily chosen "The Great 
Illusion", by Norman Angell, as a basis for her 
argument for a world-wide peace. Mr. Breck, a 
well-known member of Parliament, asserted that 
all statesmen to-day were ministers of peace, 
and Miss Lind-Af-Hageby, with characteristic 
wit and vivacity, appealed to the audience 
to sanction the substitution of mental and 
spiritual for physical force. Miss Lind-Af- 
Hageby appealed to lawyers, said a London 
critic who was present, "for support on the lofty 
grounds of her beliefs in the pacific tendencies 
of true civilization and then, with a playful 
wickedness, told them to remember that the 
coming of universal arbitration would increase 
the emoluments of their profession." So far as 
noble qualities are called forth by war she held 
that these same qualities were daily evolved 
in the struggle for life among the poor; and 

163 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

her speech, now humorous, now tensely emo- 
tional, recalled how Oliver Wendell Holmes 
used to admire in woman "the magnificent com- 
pass of her sensibilities." She was able to lift 
her audience to contemplate what poets dream. 
The Authors' Club (founded in 1891 by 
Sir Walter Besant) has charming rooms in 
Whitehall Court, and a membership of some 
eight hundred. Sir Thomas Hardy, the distin- 
guished novelist, being the president at the pres- 
ent time. The club does not include women as 
members, although the wives and daughters of 
members may go to the rooms for lunch and 
tea and enjoy many of the privileges, and ladies' 
nights are of frequent occurrence. The mem- 
bers include Richard Bagot, Alfred Austin, 
Zangwill, Colonel Young (author of "The 
Medici"), Lord Tennyson, Doctor John Tod- 
hunter, Venerable William Sinclair, Archdeacon 
of London and chaplain to the king; Sir Ren- 
nell Rodd, the poet and the present British 
Ambassador to Italy; Right Reverend W. 
Boyd Carpenter, Lord Bishop of Ripon ; Charles 
G. D. Roberts, the Canadian poet; Hughes 
Massie, the distinguished litterateur; Hall Caine, 
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Lord Dunsany, Arthur 
Fairbanks (Director of the Boston Museum of 
Fine Arts); Ford Madox Hueffer; Lloyd Mifflin, 
the American poet; Stanley Lane-Poole, Sir 

164 



CLUBS, SOCIETIES, AND MOVEMENTS 

Oliver Lodge, Sir Gilbert Parker, Professor 
Pickering of Harvard Observatory, Doctor Per- 
cival Lowell, and Doctor James H. Hyslop. 

Nor should the Times Book Club be ignored 
in any resume of the social movements of 
London. In a spacious and alluring building 
in Oxford Street is an earthly paradise of 
books. Entering, one finds oneself, while on the 
street floor, wandering amid a labyrinth of 
bookcases well filled. Ascend to the floor above, 
and the experience is repeated, with the addi- 
tion of tables and chairs where one may ex- 
amine hosts of books at his ease and make 
his selections. Beyond this are the reading and 
writing-rooms, where all the daily and weekly 
London journals and the representative ones 
from other important cities, are on file, with the 
periodicals and a varied assortment of the mis- 
cellaneous reading matter of the day. There 
are numerous writing-desks abundantly sup- 
plied with stationery, and one may thus loaf 
and invite his soul and read at his leisure, or 
bring up the arrears of his correspondence. Still 
beyond are the tea-rooms, where light refresh- 
ments are served and to which friends may be 
invited. Another feature of interest is in the lec- 
tures delivered (free to the members of the club) 
at frequent intervals by distinguished speakers. 
Among these have been Mr. Chesterton on 

165 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

"Romances of the Future"; Sir Robert Ball 
on "Halley's Comet"; Arthur Christopher 
Benson on "William Morris"; and Honorable 
Stephen Coleridge on "Inspiration." George 
Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, who spoke on 
"The Scope of the Novel", Sir Sidney Lee, and 
Lieutenant-general Sir Baden-Powell have all 
addressed the club. 

The Christian Fellowship Club is one of the 
most sympathetic of social movements. That 
admirable journal. The Christian Commonwealth ^ 
has been one of the creative factors of this or- 
ganization, which has offered a common ground 
of meeting to people of the widest diversities 
of occupations and experience. The name of 
the club defines its aim and scope. 

The organized societies in the interests of 
social enjoyment, educational advance, polit- 
ical reform, and ethical culture; and the clubs 
and cults that meet to discuss phases of art, 
industry, and other activities, are legion. There 
is hardly an idea or an interest in London that 
does not crystallize into some sort of an organ- 
ization. 

The International Club for Psychical Re- 
search is an interesting one, and it was inaugu- 
rated (in May of 1911) by an address from 
Annie Besant. This club has its own house 
in Regent Street, near Piccadilly Circus, and 

166 



CLUBS, SOCIETIES, AND MOVEMENTS 

it is prepared to offer all the facilities of a res- 
idence club. Its salons are open to every 
school of advanced thought. There are few 
afternoons or evenings in which lectures are 
not given for all higher development, and music, 
the drama, literature, philosophy, are repre- 
sented, as well as the numerous themes deal- 
ing with problematic aspects of human life. 
Naturally there is much talk on auras and 
incarnations, and a drawing-room tea is not 
infrequently followed by a quest for some 
warranted elixir of life, but excursions into un- 
known realms are yet characterized by scholar- 
ship and balanced thought, and verge little, if 
at all, on the merely fantastic. There are not 
wanting in this club those who hold that a 
sixth race is being formed to-day, and they 
locate the phenomenon in America. Nor are 
there wanting those who possibly exhibit more 
zeal in the way of inquiries as to how to 
withdraw from one's body than they do for 
the just performance of all due achievements 
when in the body; but all these are somewhat 
negligible, and for the greater part the deliber- 
ations of the International Psychic Club con- 
tribute suggestions and speculative theories 
that are not unimportant. 

The Ghost Club is not a travesty, as its name 
would imply, but is one of the most mysteri- 

167 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

ously fascinating of social organizations. Its 
membership is limited to some twenty persons, 
feminine charms being strictly ineligible, with 
the spectral proceedings confined to a very 
material dinner once a month, at their chosen 
haunt in Jermyn Street. On one of these de- 
lectable occasions during the past year. Doctor 
James H. Hyslop, formerly Professor of Psy- 
chology in Columbia and of late the head of 
the American Society for Psychical Research, 
was the guest of honor, and gave a most absorb- 
ing talk on some of his experiences with the 
secondary personality, which were listened to 
by Sir William Crookes, Doctor Abraham Wal- 
lace, and other eminent members with marked 
attention. As one of the most penetrating of 
the great psychologists, and one who has brought 
to this science important contributions in orig- 
inal research, Doctor Hyslop's account of some 
of his unique and quite unparalleled experi- 
ments was most interesting. After the address 
or paper read at these ghostly festivities, the 
theme is discussed, and the union of psychol- 
ogists and physicists, who make up the company, 
is well calculated to elucidate many hidden 
points. 

As the Authors' Club is composed exclusively 
of men, so is the Writers' Club limited to 
women. This is a literary and journalistic 

168 




Copyright London Stereoscopic Co. 

Sir William Crookes 



CLUBS, SOCIETIES, AND MOVEMENTS 

organization, with rooms in Norfolk Street, 
Strand. In the remarkable intellectual move- 
ment that has so especially characterized the 
past half century, in which every problem of life 
has assumed new proportions, in which scien- 
tific investigation, wonderful discoveries, and 
spiritual enlightenment have yielded such rich 
results, no feature has been more marked, or 
has perhaps contributed more to the general 
well-being, than the life of larger interests and 
larger mutual sympathies into which women 
have entered, or which, more strictly, they 
have achieved. There have been new revelations 
and visions; life has been set to a new key; new 
outlooks have prefigured themselves. Not only 
have the privileges of University training been 
opened to women within this period; but in a 
far subtler and even more far-reaching way, 
women's life has expanded into closer and more 
vital relations with all that is important in 
contemporary progress. It is a sort of divine 
quickening, whose great power insures commen- 
surately great results, and which is moving 
steadily forward, generating lofty and still loft- 
ier impulses. Not the least of the factors in 
this movement is the increasing social solidarity 
that manifests itself in club and society organ- 
izations. An intense magnetic attraction draws 
together men and women who are united by 

169 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

the invincible bond of noble purpose. The 
ideal vision of life, or the vision of ideal life, 
captures the modern imagination. It is the 
pillar of fire by night and the cloud by day that 
point the way for the patient discoverers in 
science; that casts its radiance on the problem- 
atic realm in which the inventor works; that il- 
luminates the atmosphere with joy and hope. 
There is everywhere manifest the ascendency of 
a finer spiritual philosophy. In the early years 
of 1830-1840 Emerson wrote to Alcott saying: 
"But I was created a seeing eye, and not a use- 
ful hand." And as those were the days when 
people copied into their diaries the letters of their 
friends, and recorded their numerous conver- 
sations with appropriate (and copious) comment, 
Mr. Alcott thus recorded his leisurely reflec- 
tions on this illuminating assertion: 

"It is much to have the vision of the seeing 
eye. Did most men possess this, the useful 
hand would be empowered with new dexterity 
also. Emerson sees me, knows me, and, more 
than all others, helps me — not by noisy praise, 
not by low appeals to interest and passion, but by 
turning the eye of others to my stand in reason 
and the nature of things. . . . Only Emerson, 
of this age, knows me, of all that I have found." 

Now this insight of Mr. Alcott's that Emer- 
son helped him "not by noisy praise, . . . but 

170 



CLUBS, SOCIETIES, AND MOVEMENTS 

by turning the eye of others" to his "stand in 
reason and the nature of things," illustrates 
vividly the mutual aid and stimulus and the 
awakening that the life of clubs and organiza- 
tions has for their members. When Doctor 
Holmes said: "I talk — not to tell what I 
think but to find out what I think," he touched 
the vital point in all mutual consultation and 
endeavor. In the sympathetic social atmos- 
phere, activities are subjected to a certain rela- 
tive measurement, and the germs of thought are 
vitalized. "We are delicate machines and re- 
quire nice treatment to get from us the maxi- 
mum of power and pleasure. . . . Conversa- 
tion is the laboratory and workshop of the 
student. . . . What are the best days in mem- 
ory.'^ Those in which we met a companion who 
was truly such. How sweet those hours when 
the day was not long enough to communicate 
and compare our intellectual jewels, — the fa- 
vorite passages of each book, the proud anec- 
dotes of our heroes, the delicious verses we 
have hoarded!" That these words image 
the opportunities of club life in a somewhat sub- 
limated ideal is no argument against their in- 
nate truth. Conversely, is there not something 
to be said for solitude as well as society.'^ Was 
it Newton who said that he studied how not to 
increase his acquaintance .^^ "Each must stand 

171 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

on his glass tripod, if he would keep his electric- 
ity." All the same, the resort where each has a 
common right and shares the privileges and 
where one may drop in without premeditation 
at any time and be tolerably sure of meeting 
some agreeable and responsive companionship; 
where one finds the sympathetic atmosphere 
(which, after all, is the one essential of any 
club), is not only one of the alleviations of our 
human pilgrimage, but is one of the most helpful 
factors in crystallizing thought and purpose 
into achievement. Is there a more important 
epoch in French civilization than that initiated 
by the Marquise de Rambouillet, who drew to- 
gether in her palace the brilliant people of her 
time, and made the Hotel de Rambouillet a 
resort to excite the attention (if not the envy) 
of even Cardinal Richelieu, and to which the 
careful reader of history may trace the foun- 
dation of the French Academy? The club 
idea, or ideal, is, indeed, as ancient as the crea- 
tion of man. Greek culture is founded on those 
conversations of Plato and Plotinus and Soc- 
rates that are the prototype of the club. 

Pass over the centuries into the early history 
of London, and one discerns, in Shakespeare's 
time, that wonderful "Mermaid" club, where 
the marvellous dramatist, with Ben Jonson, 
Chapman, Herrick, Beaumont and Fletcher, 

172 



CLUBS, SOCIETIES, AND MOVEMENTS 

and others foregathered. At Doctor Johnson's 
club. Gibbon, Goldsmith, Garrick, Reynolds, 
and Burke were in evidence; and the club 
founded by Doctor Bentley is famous for its 
inclusion of Newton, Evelyn, Locke, and Chris- 
topher Wren, also, whose memory is written in 
London architecture, which forever arrests the 
gaze from Trafalgar Square by that magnifi- 
cent panorama of old Martin's-in-the-Fields, 
silhouetted against the sky! 

The club, to a curious degree, and apparently 
by occult processes, has a tendency to arrange 
itself. "Many men, many minds." The man 
of letters and philosophic meditation does not 
seek the hilarities of the Athletic Club, nor 
do the soldier and sailor prefer the atmosphere 
of the Garrick, or the Athenaeum. The Army 
and Navy has its own brilliant and splendid 
constituency, while the poet and the scientist 
gravitate to other atmospheres. The man 
"who has the instinct of a bat to fly against 
any lighted candle and put it out", is not a 
welcome club associate anywhere. 

After all, our chief business in this earthly 
sojourn is right living. The man who interprets 
his own life to mean nothing beyond his personal 
interests and affairs will find himself living a very 
hard, selfish, and colorless life. If his neighbor 
has any need of mind, body, or estate that he 

173 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

can meet, there lies a part of his own business. 
It is not at all necessary that, in order to enter 
into human service, one shall migrate to some 
new locality and get out posters to advertise 
his philanthropic purposes. Service is the true 
mutual relation, and it should be as natural 
and as unpremeditated as breathing, — simply 
an inalienable part of life itself, and not 
in the least a matter of geographical location. 
Why, indeed, should one reserve his frank 
good-will, or any spontaneous expression of it, 
for his personal friends, or for the people he 
believes to be socially important? Why should 
it not be a part of his character to radiate good- 
will and good cheer and whatever happiness 
he may, as he takes his walks abroad? Good 
works do not lie merely — one had almost said 
mostly — in imposing figures attached to one's 
autograph in a subscription list. They do not 
even lie mostly in deeds. They lie in a word, 
a smile, a glance, in that atmosphere that each 
one unconsciously generates, which he bears 
about him, and inevitably communicates. The 
society of the club, what is it, after all, but the 
multiplication of the one friend or companion? 
Instead of one, there are many. Therefore it 
aggregates opportunity, it multiplies privilege, 
influence, stimulus, sympathies. If there is a 
condition in which selfishness, conceit, petty 

174 



CLUBS, SOCIETIES, AND MOVEMENTS 

limitations, or discordant feeling can be re- 
pressed and corrected, it lies in the very heart 
of that intimate association of the club. If 
there be a place or a condition in which all that 
is noble, true, generous, and beautiful can be 
fostered, it is there. 

These are the ideal possibilities of club life. 
Time may be redeemed from cold and narrow 
calculations and set free to be lived with the 
ardor of romance and imaginative intensity. 
In the midst of congenial companionship, one 
rises to new heights of thought and endeavor. 
The soul is in bondage so long as the eyes are 
closed to the true significances of life. The mo- 
ment these are perceived, obstacles and limita- 
tions fall away of themselves. The most real 
possession of man is his own soul. No misun- 
derstanding, no undervaluation from others, 
can take that from him. If he should be misun- 
derstood as being ignoble, the effective reply 
is to be noble. If he is held as selfish, let 
him reply by his generosity; if he were regarded 
as a disagreeable companion, let him reply by 
courtesy and love. One need never fret about 
any possible misunderstanding. All his concern 
is simply to live nobly. The rest will take care 
of itself. For it is a beautiful thing to live, 
and life itself is the finest of all the Fine Arts. 



175 



VI 

COLOR AND ROMANCE OF LONDON 

For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see. 
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be; 
"Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails, 
Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales; " 

"A vision as of crowded city streets. 

With human life in endless overflow; 

Thunder of thoroughfares; trumpets that blow 
To battle; clamor, in obscure retreat. 
Of sailors, landed from their anchored fleets; 

Tolling of bells in turrets, and below 

Voices of children, and bright flowers that throw 
O'er garden-walls their intermingled sweets!" 

The color and romance of London reveal them- 
selves to him whose wand trembles over the 
site of some long-buried tradition or treasure, 
and is perhaps all the more calculated to fas- 
cinate the imagination in that it is not a prom- 
inent or obvious feature of the landscape. Few 
visitors who drive in Pall Mall or in St. James 
Park, viewing Buckingham Palace and the mag- 
nificent monumental sculpture to Queen Vic- 
toria, — which recalls the lines of Tennyson : 

"Her court was pure; her life serene; 

God gave her peace; her land reposed; 
A thousand claims to reverence closed 
Li her as Mother, Wife, and Queen;" 
176 




k3 



COLOR AND ROMANCE 

have the faintest realization of the beauty of 
the gardens in the rear of the palace. The 
high walls that surround the grounds effectually 
conceal them from the public, and even those 
who are often bidden to court functions and who 
step from their equipages into the palace, may 
be quite unfamiliar with the loveliness of the 
landscape gardening on the west fagade of the 
structure. So spacious are these grounds that 
five thousand people may avail themselves, 
without crowding, of an invitation to a garden 
party. There is a broad terrace, in the Italian 
style, looking over a beautiful miniature lake, 
on which boats ply, and there are trees that look 
as if they might have sheltered Falstaff and 
King Henry IV. Through these forest monarchs 
are caught glimpses of a sky that can, on rare 
occasions, be as blue and soft as on the con- 
tinent, and the emerald velvet of the turf, 
brought to the utmost perfection of culture, 
the gentle, irregular slopes and alluring banks, 
the various wild fowl domesticated on the 
waters of the little lake, and the rare and 
beautiful shrubs, render these palace grounds 
an example of the beauty and color possible to 
the British metropolis. 

For the lover of romance and association as 
well as for the antiquarian, nothing could be 
more suggestive than a day's ramble in Lin- 

177 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

coin's Inn Fields and the adjacent regions. 
Here is the topographical center of London. 
In Newman's Row there is a little book-shop 
bearing Ben Jonson's name kept by a confessed 
devotee of the first English author to publish 
his writings under the name of "Works", 
and to be, at the time, reviled for the term which 
subsequently has been so generally adopted. 
The "Ben Jonson Book-Shop" is an interior 
to conjure with, a nook that seems to have 
dropped out of the London of Dickens and 
Thackeray. Crowded and crammed with books 
and pamphlets of all descriptions, it is a haunt 
that fascinates the saunterer. Not far distant is 
Whetstone Park, where between the fields and 
Holborn once stood Spencer House, the ancestral 
home of the author of "The Faerie Queene", 
which, in the early years of the seventeenth 
century, was changed into a hostelry known as 
the "Bull and Gate." Holborn was also the 
home of Milton, and Fielding introduces the 
"Gate", an inn, into his "Tom Jones." Not 
only the "Faery Queen", but also "Paradise 
Lost" is connected with the Holborn region, for 
Milton had there his home. The tragedy of the 
execution of Lord Russell is vividly recalled 
in Lincoln's Inn Fields, for in the center is an 
oval tablet placed flat on the ground, on which is 
inscribed: "On this spot was beheaded William 

178 



COLOR AND ROMANCE 

Lord Russell, a lover of constitutional liberty, 
21st July, A.D. 1683." Russell Square, in all 
its beauty and greenery, and with its fine hotels 
and attractive proximity to the British Museum, 
perpetuates the name of Lord Russell, whose 
home was on its borders. Lincoln's Inn Gar- 
dens were newly laid out in 1683, and the new 
hall and the spacious and stately library were 
built about the middle of the nineteenth cen- 
tury. But this ground is all historic. It was 
given, in the twelfth century, by William Cot- 
terell to the Knights of St. John, as a tilting 
field. The old hall dates back to 1506; and in 
this space the revels and masques were held. 
It is recorded that Charles II, attended by 
Prince Rupert and the youthful Duke of Mon- 
mouth, came in state to one of these. 

One of the most interesting things in all 
London is the old chapel, built for the inn by 
Inigo Jones, in 1623, and in which still linger the 
associations of Heber, the saintly; of Tillotson, 
Warburton, and Donne, all of whom preached 
here. Around this region old Pepys used to 
take his walks abroad, gleaning the latest gos- 
sip of the day, which he so amusingly con- 
served for the edification of future generations. 
In the crypt are entombed Prynne, a famous 
lawyer, Brome, a song-writer, and Secretary 
Thurloe. The tall towers that form the gate- 

179 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

way to the entrance of Chancery Lane, with 
their solid oaken doors, date back to 1564; they 
bear the arms of Sir Thomas Lovell, and of the 
Earl of Lincoln whose estate, with its fine man- 
sion and extensive gardens, was located here 
in the early years of the fourteenth century. 
What a procession of famous men have passed 
through these gates during their sojourn on 
earth! The list includes the names of Shake- 
speare, Cromwell, Lord Bacon, Ben Jonson, the 
ubiquitous Pepys, and, in later days, Dickens, 
Thackeray, Tennyson, and many others of claim 
to remembrance. In one of the old buildings 
there is still shown the false ceiling in which Sec- 
retary Thurloe concealed a large package of 
state papers, including many important letters, 
which remained hidden for many years; and 
it was to this building that Cromwell came 
to confer with Thurloe. The long list of stu- 
dents at Lincoln's Inn embraces many of the 
most important names in English history, 
such as Sir Matthew Hale, Sir John Durham, 
Sir Thomas More, Lord Keeper Egerton, Rich- 
ard Cromwell, Penn, Erskine, and Lord Shaftes- 
bury. All this region is haunted by the creations 
of Dickens, whose characters lived and moved 
and had their being in this vicinity. Lord 
Strafford was born in Chancery Lane, and here 
Cardinal Woolsey had his home. When Izaak 

180 



COLOR AND ROMANCE 

Walton was not fishing, he presided over a 
Hnen-draper's shop in this lane, and close at hand 
is that wonderful place, the Record Office of 
England. The National Archives date from 
1100, and the collection, now placed in the new 
building which was completed in 1900, is the 
most complete of any in the world. In the 
museum may be seen and inspected one of 
the curiosities of all international documents, — 
the Domesday Book of William the Conqueror. 
There is the log book of Nelson's warship, 
the Victory; and it was in the Search-room, in 
this office, that Doctor Wallace made so many 
discoveries regarding Shakespeare a few years 
ago. 

Of all the Inns of Court, the Temple is the 
most rich and impressive. The Knights Tem- 
plars fixed upon this place in 1184, remaining the 
holders until 1313, when, at the Reformation, 
it became the property of the Crown. James 
I granted it to the benchers in perpetual fee, 
and it is enclosed by walls and gates; the arms 
show the design of a winged horse, with the 
motto, Volat ad astra virtus. The Temple 
Church is an interior of mysterious grandeur, and 
it is here that the knights of the Age of Chivalry 
are entombed. The solemn effigies are numer- 
ous; the "penitential cell" is shown; the choir 
(finished in 1240) is a notable example of the 

181 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

early English style. The tomb of Oliver Gold- 
smith is in the little churchyard with its plot 
of green grass, and Plowden, Howell, and 
Archbishop Hooker are also buried here. Gold- 
smith died on April 4, 1784, "and on the day of 
the funeral the stairway to his room was crowded 
with loving mourners of all sorts and conditions," 
writes Samuel Hales, "mostly women to whom 
his generous nature had been their sunshine. 
The great and serious lawyer, Blackstone, occu- 
pied the rooms beneath those of Goldsmith," 
continues Mr. Hales, "and often found his 
studies interrupted by the revelry overhead. 
Thackeray at a later time lived in Goldsmith's 
rooms. He made Pendennis and Warrington 
residents in Lamb Court." 

In a visit to London in 1883, Phillips Brooks 
preached in the Temple Church, deeply con- 
scious of its rich historical associations, and 
the audience that gathered to hear the great 
preacher who stood in the sanctuary of Hooker 
deliver a discourse that Hooker might well 
have delighted to hear, included many of the 
most distinguished men of the bar, and of the 
more eminent people in England who came to 
the metropolis for that day to hear the celebrated 
American divine. 

The Middle Temple Hall, near Temple Gar- 
dens, is Elizabethan in architecture, and was 

182 



COLOR AND ROMANCE 

built in 1572. One magnificent chamber in it 
is lighted from above by the most sumptu- 
ously magnificent stained-glass windows, the 
rich color of the light pervading the entire 
room. It was in this vast chamber, in 1601, 
that "Twelfth Night" was produced as a revel, 
many authorities asserting that it was under 
Shakespeare's personal direction. Between the 
Temple and Somerset House were the famous 
grounds of the earls of Essex and Arundel, with 
their respective mansions. The great house of 
the Earl of Essex looked over its own gardens 
to the bank of the Thames. 

Arundel House stood in what is now Norfolk 
Street, and it was the Earl of Arundel who, 
yielding to the persuasions of John Evelyn, 
presented to Oxford his collection of inscribed 
marbles, and gave his library to the Royal 
Society. The Countess of Nottingham, who 
betrayed the trust of Essex by failing to give 
to Queen Elizabeth the ring that he sent which 
would have saved him from his tragic fate, 
died in Arundel House, and down all the 
years there echoes the reply of the queen, when, 
on her dying bed, the Countess implored her 
forgiveness: "God may forgive you, but I never 
can." Many illustrious names are associated 
with this region: Peter the Great stayed there 
in 1698; William Penn, Coleridge, Congreve; 

183 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

Tennyson lodged in a house near the river, and 
Miss Mitford, Mrs. Browning's friend, stayed 
in this street whenever she came up to London. 

Somerset House, dating to 1552, was long 
a royal residence and was used by Queen Hen- 
rietta Maria and by Catherine of Braganza. 
Here the body of Cromwell lay in state; Lord 
Nelson frequently trod these adjacent streets 
on his way to the Admiralty Office, which in his 
time was in Somerset House. It is now entirely 
given over to government offices. One of the 
curiosities is the room in which wills are stored, 
and visitors to this room often request to see 
the wills of Shakespeare, Newton, and Doctor 
Johnson, which are shown on proper request. 
In the famous Diary of Pepys (1660-1668) he 
makes quaint references to these documents. 

The Strand is full of memories, associations, 
and traditions, and the new and spacious cres- 
cent street called Aldwych, connecting Hol- 
born with the Strand, has demolished many a 
place of dreams. But the beautiful church of 
St. Clement Danes, with the statue of Gladstone 
before it, is preserved in all its wonderful 
vista. On the pew which belonged to Doctor 
Johnson, in St. Clement Danes, a tablet with a 
memorial inscription is placed. St. Dunstan's, 
across Fleet Street, has a statue of Queen Eliz- 
abeth over the entrance. Prince Henry's house 

184 




St. Clement Danes, with statue of Gladstone 



COLOR AND ROMANCE 

in the Strand is still preserved, wisely kept as a 
show-place by the London City Council, and it 
is said to be the oldest house in London. The 
fine oak paneling well repays a visit. 

One of the surprises of London is the delight- 
ful little houses with tiny gardens that will be 
found tucked away behind some great build- 
ing, entered through a door in a wall, when 
the explorer finds himself in a transformation 
scene. George Eliot and Herbert Spencer were 
frequent wanderers in all this old region, 
whose fascinations multiply with familiarity. 
Mr. Hales, who knows his London, root and 
branch, says of one of the most impressive 
haunts, Ely Place, off Charterhouse Street, that 
therein stands "one of the most hallowed relics 
of Old London, St. Ethelreda's Church, for- 
merly the chapel of the Palace of the Bishops 
of Ely." Coming to London to attend the 
sessions of Parliament, they required for their 
use during these sojourns estates and resources 
of their own within the city. Ely House was 
one of the most important of these. In King 
Richard III Shakespeare refers to it. King 
Henry's first interview with Cranmer, regarding 
his possible divorce from Queen Catherine, was 
held in the cloisters of Ely House. 

All this region lies within the golden romance 
of history. The Chapel of St. Ethelreda is 

185 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

rich in carvings and a curious antique altar. 
Staple Inn, that "incomparable relic of old- 
world London", is another memorial that 
voices the eloquence of a past gone from all 
save history. 

In this inn Doctor Johnson wrote "Rasselas" 
in the January of 1759. Gray's Inn is one of 
the enchanting spots, with its spacious quad- 
rangles and old-time gardens. The chapel still 
largely preserves Lord Grey's "Chantrey" of 
1315, and every night, as has been an un- 
broken custom for three hundred years, the 
curfew rings at nine o'clock in the evening. 
Sir Philip Sidney was a student at Gray's 
Inn, as was Sir Francis Bacon, Macaulay, 
and Lord Chief Justice Holt. 

Through the archway leading into Duke's 
Street there stood, until 1910, the famous 
Sardinia Chapel, the oldest Catholic church in 
London, dating back to about 1640. It was 
entered only through the house of the Sardinian 
Ambassador. 

The new thoroughfares of Aldwych and 
Kingsway have greatly changed old London, 
but the "Old Curiosity Shop" of Dickens is still 
to be visited, and one involuntarily looks for 
"Little Nell", and if it be dream or reality that 
rewards his quest, who may say? The late 
Doctor Hiram Corson, the friend of Robert 

186 




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COLOR AND ROMANCE 

Browning and one of the poet's greatest inter- 
preters, was very fond of staying in the Inns 
of Courts Hotel, which is on, or near, the site 
of Milton's home. In Masson's biography of 
England's sublime poet, we find him saying 
(in reference to the month of April, 1648), 
that through the mornings and evenings of 
that month "we can see Milton in his house in 
High Holborn, with the Hebrew Bible before 
him, making his effort to translate as literally 
as possible these nine Psalms (Ixxx-lxxxviii) 
into English verse. His sonnet to Lord Fairfax 
was also written here, and it was in this house 
that he began his History of Britain." 

St. Paul's Cathedral is justly a part of the 
color and romance of London, and while it does 
not attract the immediate attention which 
Westminster Abbey always focusses, it lures the 
visitor back again and again. In the thirteenth 
century, St. Paul's was a magnificent vista of 
gothic arches, seven hundred feet in length; 
and there were shrines and monuments. But 
this was burned (the cathedral indeed has 
suffered from a series of fires) and in 1675 
Christopher Wren, whose father was a Dean of 
Windsor, laid the first stone of the present 
edifice, which was thirty-five years in process 
of completion. It was the design of the archi- 
tect to have the interior of the dome decorated 

187 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

with mosaic paintings, and to have a balda- 
chino erected in the choir, after the fashion 
of the Itahan cathedrals. That this intention 
has not been carried out leaves it devoid of 
that splendor of color that one becomes accus- 
tomed to on the continent. It was the earnest 
hope of Sir Joshua Reynolds to adorn the walls 
with the works of Royal Academicians. Sir 
Joshua was himself to paint the Nativity; 
Benjamin West the Delivery of the Law by 
Moses, while Cipriani and others were selected 
to paint other scenes. But the Dean of St. 
Paul's of that day (early in the decade of 1770- 
1780) was vehemently opposed to creations of 
beauty in a church. "While I live and have the 
power," wrote this prelate to his bishop, "I 
will never suffer the doors of the Metropoli- 
tan church to be opened to Popery." It is to 
be hoped that in the beauty of the celestial 
regions to which the good dean has presumably 
passed, his perceptions have expanded, and his 
ideas grown less severe and illiberal. So, to 
this day, St. Paul's remains bare, vast, and for- 
bidding, even in its grandeur, yet with a certain 
splendor of space and vista. It is quite on the 
cards, however, that in time the noble interior 
may be so appropriately decorated as to infi- 
nitely increase its charm. Dean Milman was 
warmly in favor of this embellishment and ad- 

188 



COLOR AND ROMANCE 

dressed to the Bishop of London a letter urging 
that "such decorations be introduced into 
St. Paul's as would give splendor, while not dis- 
turbing the solemnity, or the exquisitely har- 
monious simplicity, of the edifice." There are 
many interesting memorial sculptures and mon- 
uments; one to Doctor Johnson, by the urgency 
of Sir Joshua Reynolds, although Doctor John- 
son was entombed in the Abbey; one to Sir 
Joshua by Flaxman; and one of great dignity 
to that wonderful scholar and great Orientalist, 
Sir William Jones, "who first opened the poetry 
and wisdom of our Indian empire to wonder- 
ing Europe." The list of national heroes who 
are commemorated here is a long one; and of 
more recent fame are the monuments to Gen- 
eral Gordon, and to Lord Leighton, the latter 
in bronze, showing a recumbent statue of the 
great artist, with ideal groups at the head and 
foot, by Brock, the distinguished sculptor. 

The location of St. Paul's on Ludgate Hill, 
with the dense growth of the vast metropolis 
all around it, is deeply impressive. It seems 
a majestic presence presiding over the des- 
tinies of London. Often the dome alone is 
visible for miles around through the fog and 
smoke while the cathedral itself, and all the 
mass of buildings that surround it, are hidden in 

189 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

the impenetrable mist. Mildred Wedmore pic- 
tures it in the lines: 

"Vast misty spaces sown with glimmering lights. 
Where waves of organ music surge and roll; 
And never air yet thrilled on mountain heights 
Like this of London's proud, magnetic soul." 

Browning, as a lad, on holiday afternoons, 
used to seek a certain elm-shaded hillside in 
Hampstead, where, lying on the grass, he could 
see the sunshine gilding the golden cross on 
the dome of St. Paul's. Sir Christopher Wren 
believed it built on the site of an old Roman 
cemetery, for when the foundations of the pres- 
ent church were being laid, there were found 
relics of three successive foundations deep 
down in the earth: coffins and tombs of the 
Saxon period; graves with the British ivory 
pins that fastened the shrouds; and under all 
these were Roman lamps, urns, and other in- 
signia of the Roman period in Great Britain. 
In his English note-books Hawthorne says of 
St. Paul's that it appears to him " unspeakably 
great and noble, and the more so from the 
throng and bustle continually going on around 
its base, without in the least disturbing the 
sublime repose of its great dome and all its 
massive height and breadth." St. Paul's is 
far more fortunate in its location than is St. 
Peter's, which, with the splendid wings of the 

190 



COLOR AND ROMANCE 

Vatican Palace spreading out around the piazza, 
yet is nearly hidden by the encroachment of the 
multitude of buildings around. 

It is a fact to be remembered that the first 
memorial placed in St. Paul's was that of How- 
ard, the reformer of prison life, which Dean 
Milman, in his history of the cathedral espe- 
cially remarks. In the south tower hangs the 
gigantic bell which tolls only for the death and 
funeral ceremonies of members of the royal 
family, bishops of London, deans of St. Paul's, 
and of Lord Mayors who die in office. 

Of all the quaint, out-of-the-world places 
imaginable, are the narrow streets and small 
squares near St. Paul's known as Paternoster 
Row, Amen Corner, Ave Maria Lane, War- 
wick Lane, and the other paths and thorough- 
fares hidden away in the densely populated 
area of this part of London. All this region is 
particularly preempted by booksellers and pub- 
lishers. Bibles, prayer-books, and religious liter- 
ature of all kinds abound in these little shops, 
crammed with books. The Blackwoods, the 
publishing houses of Hodder and Stoughton, 
Elliot Stock, the Cassells, and others are all in 
this quarter. Many of the most prominent 
publishers, however, are in the West End, as 
John Lane in Vigo Street, the John Murray 

191 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

house in Albemarle Street, and the well-known 
Smith and Elder establishment in Waterloo 
Place, while the new and enterprising house of 
Herbert Jenkins is just off Haymarket. It is 
rather incredible that London, which is the 
paradise of books, has yet no bookstore of the 
proportions of Brentano in the Avenue de 
r Opera, in Paris. 

But the color and romance of London lies 
by no means exclusively in her historic past, 
or in the relics and associations of four centuries 
ago. The Elizabethan London of Holborn, 
the Georgian London, is not more alluring than 
the Victorian, with its wonderful advance; 
or than the still later London of Edward VII, 
or the contemporary London of to-day. The 
revelings of long-gone centuries are no more fas- 
cinating than the pageants of modern days. 
For in street processions and in the magniiBcence 
of decorations, the London of to-day is unex- 
celled. The Jubilee Celebration of the Vic- 
torian reign, in 1887; the coronation of King 
Edward VH, and of the present king; the arrival 
and entertainment of royal guests; these, and 
other occasions of pageantry, are always re- 
splendent in glitter and richness of trappings, 
though less picturesque than the gorgeous array 
of continental festas. Piccadilly itself, when 

192 



COLOR AND ROMANCE 

decorated, is a spectacle of almost unparalleled 
beauty. The Green Park extending on the 
one hand, the great houses facing it; Apsley 
House, Lord Rothschild's, the immense house of 
the late Baroness Burdett-Coutts : Devonshire 
House (despite its high walls and monotonous 
yard), — all present a gala aspect, with the ter- 
races and windows filled with flowers, and ban- 
ners and decorations on every hand. When any 
festive occasion in London is enlivened by the 
presence of Indian princes and oflficials, the 
Oriental splendor invests the scene like an 
Arabian Nights vision. Their jewels and em- 
broideries and rich fabrics, worn with a mar- 
vellous grace, offer a striking contrast to the 
prelates of the church, in their robes of gold 
and crimson and dark velvet, with some touch 
of monastic suggestion. The royal cortege 
and the splendid equipages that appear in the 
streets when a pageant is in evidence add more 
touches of gorgeous color to the scene, as the 
scarlet and gold gleams through the throngs of 
people. All this blazonry is perhaps quite as ef- 
fective as the tournaments of the Arthurian Age. 
The laying of corner-stones, the opening of 
bazaars and societies, furnish much occupation 
for royalties and the peerage. The present 
Queen Mary, like Queen Alexandra, takes a 
deep personal interest in all that pertains to 

193 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

the aid and betterment of the less fortunate 
classes; and the young Princess Mary is the 
head of more than one organization of charity. 
Young girls of the nobility frequently go to 
the East End to play on piano or violin; to sing 
or read before some organization of the poor, 
and carry with them some atmosphere of color 
and charm that radiates its spell over poverty 
and ignorance. The romance and color of 
London are not limited to outward effects, but 
often include stimulus and suggestion from the 
immaterial side of life. 

The motor-car has initiated in England, as 
indeed in every other country, new phases of 
the gaieties of life. To motor to Windsor or 
Richmond, to the estates of noted hostesses 
anywhere within a hundred miles of London, has 
become easy, and the week-end house-party 
flourishes as one of the chief social enjoyments. 
A visit to Haddon Hall in the Peak district, 
with its reminiscences of Dorothy Vernon, is one 
of the bits of local color denied to the season of 
1914, however, because fear of the suffragettes 
caused the Duke of Rutland to close this splen- 
did example of English architecture, which is a 
priceless heirloom to the nation. Its gateway 
dates back to Edward III, and the banquet 
room is supposed to add the spectral apparitions 
of cavaliers to its more obvious attractions. 

194 



COLOR AND ROMANCE 

The "tube" system of London should be 
recognized as a legitimate factor in the romance 
as well as the realities of London life. No such 
perfection of local transit can be found else- 
where in the civilized world, considering the 
extent of the lines and the manifold connections 
that make a continuous progress possible. The 
swiftness, ease, and comfort with which one may 
journey from Charing Cross to Golder's Green, 
or to the far limits both east and west, is not 
elsewhere equaled. More than that, the tube 
makes it easily possible for the dwellers in 
Hampstead and all the surrounding suburbs 
to avail themselves of plays, music, and lectures, 
to a degree heretofore impossible. The tube and 
the motor-car, together, contribute immeasur- 
ably to the decrease of crowding in town resi- 
dences. It is as convenient to enjoy a house 
in the outskirts of London as to limit the 
household to an apartment in the heart of the 
metropolis; and the effect on the general life 
is marked. To those whose resources do not 
permit the motor-car, the tube offers a far better 
means of transit than is found in subway 
travel in other cities. The ventilation is ad- 
mirable; the system of connections is clear and 
available; and however great the rush, the tube 
never seems overcrowded. 

But it is in society that the perfection of color 

195 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

and romance in London is noted. Since the 
accession of the present king and queen, it 
has been the custom of the queen to dine, on 
the night of the Derby, with the Duke and 
Duchess of Devonshire. The king chooses this 
night to entertain, in Buckingham Palace, the 
members of the Jockey Club. The state 
dining-room in Devonshire House is a stately 
apartment, richly decorated, and the silver 
plate used was manufactured expressly for the 
sixth duke of this house. Many of the pieces are 
after mythological designs, and the candelabra 
and table vases are designed with the support 
of classical figures. In Sunderland House, one 
salon is of pale green marble, with Corinthian 
pillars of malachite, and the decorated ceiling, 
brought from Italy, is set in a surrounding 
canopy of French gilt that reflects the electric 
candelabra in a luminous blaze. The gardens 
and terraces of the houses where the entertain- 
ments and festivities of the season are in prog- 
ress are banked with roses, lilies, and carnations, 
amid which are electrically lighted Chinese 
lanterns, making the scene an enchanting 
fairyland. 

The court is always a wonderful pageant of 
color, with the superb costumes of the women 
and the glow of the scarlet and gold of the uni- 
forms. Sir Aston Webb's new front of Bucking- 

196 



COLOR AND ROMANCE 

ham Palace has so transformed that structure 
as to have almost the effect in London that 
Napoleon aimed to secure in Paris when he 
.commanded that the dome of the Invalides 
should be gilded. 

The Covent Garden opera house is another 
society feature during the season on royal 
nights. Then it becomes a very Bendemeer's 
Bower of roses (ingeniously formed of paper), 
more than two millions of rose sprays with 
blossoms, buds, and leaves, being used, until 
every inch of the interior is exquisitely deco- 
rated. The house is literally lined with flow- 
ers. With royalty in the box reserved for the 
king, with the entire house in jewels and soft 
colors, the scene is one to record itself in 
memory. 

An entrancing spectacle in this past season 
was the Peace Ball, given to celebrate the cen- 
tenary of peace between America and Great 
Britain. Albert Hall was splendidly decorated, 
and the entire scheme was the blending of the 
national colors of the two countries. This 
scheme of color was also carried out in the cos- 
tumes worn. The great feature of the evening, 
the procession, was preceded by dancing; after 
which the lights were lowered, and on the stroke 
of midnight, one of the caravels of Columbus, 
the Santa Anna^ propelled by invisible mechan- 

197 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

ism, her flags flying, her sails all set, moved 
forward, with Columbus on board surrounded 
by a group of his sailors. There followed in 
the procession aborigines, in the garb of their 
tribes; a deputation of the Pilgrim Fathers; of 
William Penn and the Quakers; and several 
other clever impersonations. This historic pro- 
cession passed, and there entered Britannia 
(represented by Lady Maud Warrender) fol- 
lowed by fifty prominent women of society 
and accompanied by the martial strains of 
** Rule Britannia." Closely after came the forty- 
eight States, each represented by an American 
woman costumed in red and white, with blue 
trains and helmets and waving plumes of gold; 
each bore aloft the shield of her State. Then 
came the British colonies, represented by forty 
of the most charming English girls. The entire 
elaborate scheme was charmingly carried out 
with the most harmonious detail. 

The noted country-houses extend hospitali- 
ties hardly second to that of royalty. One 
favorite estate, not infrequently honored by the 
presence of royalty, has a deer park of unnum- 
bered acres, entered by eleven lodges, and 
among the beautiful and picturesque features of 
the landscape is a large lake, on which boats are 
always ready. The interior of the house is 
almost an art gallery of itself, and the library, 

198 



COLOR AND ROMANCE 

attended by a staff of librarians, contains some 
of the rarest folios and prints that are known in 
the world. In the billiard-room is the tape that 
ticks the news of finance, and the guests are 
bestowed in such luxury as to make the week- 
end visit a truly royal event in life. 

Farnboro House, the residence selected by 
Napoleon III after the downfall of the Empire, 
is within easy motoring distance from London. 
It is an interesting feature, as the home of the 
widowed Empress Eugenie, whose sad life finds 
a sustaining comfort in the friendship of the 
royal family of England, and especially that 
of Princess Beatrice of Battenburg, and her 
charming daughter. Queen Victoria Eugenie of 
Spain, the god-daughter of Eugenie. 

No court society has the absolute and unsur- 
passed magnificence of that of England. King 
George and Queen Mary are still youthful 
in their feeling and capacity for enjoyment, 
and the court circles number many of the 
most talented and gifted men and women, 
whom no degree of luxury can enervate or de- 
bar from humanitarian endeavors and achieve- 
ments of importance in that world outside courts 
and fashion, whose pageantry, while a part of 
their lives, is by no means its most important 
or most enthralling concern. 

199 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

The young Prince and Princess Louis of 
Battenburg are enthusiasts about music, and 
their presence at a delightful musicale given 
by the Duchess of Somerset in Grosvenor 
Square, and at other interesting musical enter- 
tainments, has created a renewed demand 
for musical parties. Conversation, however, is 
the rival of music, and when such guests as 
Sir Gilbert Parker, Sir Gerald Lowther, Lady 
Selborne, and other brilliant wits meet, even 
the music of Signor Boni, or of a youthful 
artiste^ Miss Margel Gluck, whose violin is an 
instrument of enchantment under her magic 
touch, do not always command the rapt atten- 
tion that such music would seem capable of in- 
spiring. Miss Gluck, despite her foreign name, 
is an American, the granddaughter of that noted 
divine and scholar, the Reverend Doctor Charles 
Mellen Tyler, Professor Emeritus of the Chair 
of Christian Ethics in Cornell. A pupil of 
Sevoik and of Leopold Auer, she won swift 
fame in England as the solo violinist on the 
Tetrazzini tour. She is also among the artists 
who have been honored by royalty. Many of 
the ladies of the peerage are accomplished 
musical artists, who could easily hold rank 
in the professional world as well as in the 
drawing-room, where appreciation is the un- 
written law of courtesy. Of these Lady Lind- 

200 




a, 

a 



3 



3 
o 



o 



COLOR AND ROMANCE 

say was one of the most notable, and her death 
in 1912 has deprived London society of one of its 
most briUiant and versatile members. Lady 
Lindsay was so highly cultured in music that 
she played accompaniments for Joachim and 
for Madame Norman Neruda. She was also a 
poet, and had gone deeply into Italian and 
French literature. Lady Lindsay was a col- 
lector of Italian paintings, and her beautiful 
and spacious salons were almost a gallery 
of Italian art. She is said to have been the 
creator of the aesthetic costume, and it was 
perhaps her close friendship with Burne-Jones 
that first initiated her classic draperies from 
which the furore spread until, in "passionate 
Brompton", the faded greens and sage-yellows 
became so caricatured as to incite the ridicule 
of which they perished. As apparently all the 
fairies came to her christening. Lady Lindsay 
was also a writer of stories, with more than usual 
claim to literary quality. When Sir Coutts 
Lindsay estabhshed the Grosvenor Gallery, it 
was Lady Lindsay whose brilliant social gen- 
ius rendered it the focus of artistic and literary 
London. Burne-Jones, who exhibited there, 
Matthew Arnold, Robert Browning, Lord 
Leighton, George Frederick Watts, Swinburne, 
— all these were in her circle, and she is re- 
membered as one of the great hostesses of a 

201 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

city whose social movements are among its 
most important and dominating features. 

The ceremony known as the changing of the 
guard is one of the picturesque sights of London. 
Every morning, in St. James Park, the royal 
guard is changed shortly before eleven, and 
crowds gather to see the scarlet-coated guards- 
men salute the flag, and to listen to the excellent 
music that accompanies this scene. In fact, 
anything that is of the out-of-door life, is an 
attraction to the Londoner. In the present 
season, besides the usual garden-parties, there 
has been invented a new diversion, midnight 
river parties on the Thames, when a pleasure 
launch will be chartered for a company of in- 
vited guests. The sail from Westminster to 
Hampton Court, with an orchestra supplying 
music on the water, and a midnight banquet, 
is considered very "smart", and the enter- 
tainment is in special vogue. Nor can the church 
parade, in Rotten Row, and opposite Stanhope 
Gate, be ignored by the visitor who would 
see London in her completeness. 

One hears much of the London of Dickens, of 
Thackeray; but it is the London of Whistler 
that is most in evidence to the sojourner with an 
eye for color effects. To see a luminous body 
in the air which is said to be the sun, but look- 
ing like a fiery red ball hanging amid clouds of 

202 



COLOR AND ROMANCE 

dark smoke; or, in the late afternoon, to loiter 
by Marble Arch and see, over the Bayswater 
region, this same fiery ball, an orb of glowing 
scarlet against a soft blue-gray sky, through 
an opaline haze of pearl and rose and hints of 
emerald green, and soft amber shading away into 
azure and deepening into purple, is to have a 
pantomime of color before the eye. It is a Vision 
Beautiful; it is a spectacle to be seen nowhere on 
earth save in London. 

Many of the great mansions of London have 
yielded to the march of ruthless progress which 
strides on with irresistible force and trans- 
forms many a treasure-house into a thorough- 
fare for public uses. The Grand Hotel on 
Trafalgar Square occupies the site of North- 
umberland House; Somerset House has been 
turned into national and municipal offices, 
and the Whitehall is now the center of govern- 
mental activities; Stafford House became a 
public museum in the early spring of 1914; 
but Devonshire, Lansdowne, Dorchester, Ches- 
terfield, Crewe, and Apsley houses, with a 
few others that were, and still are, the private 
palaces of London, remain to allure the imag^ 
ination and focus the social and historic interest. 
Stafford House has already been somewhat 
described in its present aspect as the Lon- 
don Museum; and of all the group it is, 

203 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

in some respects, the most interesting. No 
one of the noted mansions of London was so 
often the scene of philanthropic enterprises and 
social gatherings in the interest of reforms, as 
was Stafford House. It was one of the few 
private houses to which Queen Victoria went so- 
cially; it was the house whose guests included 
Garibaldi, Livingstone, the African explorer, 
with hosts of the famous artists of the lyric and 
dramatic stage, Malibran, Grisi, Bellini, Ros- 
sini, and Madame Ristori; while such Americans 
as Charles Sumner and Mrs. Stowe were wel- 
comed. The great hall of Stafford House was 
entered through immense doors that were 
mirrors, and which, as they swung open, re- 
vealed the grand staircase that is now the admi- 
ration of all visitors to the museum collections, 
with its light coming from above through 
pictured windows; its Corinthian columns, and 
its steps of giallo antico. This hall is eighty feet 
square and a hundred and twenty -five in height; 
the floor is of red and white marble, and one 
can well imagine that when it was illuminated 
by the splendid candelabra, with the ladies in 
full dress and the men with their orders and 
decorations, this interior may have almost vied 
with those marvellous festas of Venice, which 
still live on the canvas of Paul Veronese. 

Chesterfield House is invested with an aroma 

204 



COLOR AND ROMANCE 

of the mid-eighteenth century years, when the 
celebrated Lord Chesterfield was in residence; 
his presence pervades it even to-day. The 
library remains almost as he left it; the crimson 
silk hangings in the Italian drawing-room are 
reminiscent of his daily life; and his books and 
many of his manuscripts remain as he placed 
them. Around the frieze in the library he caused 
to be inscribed these lines from the eleventh 
Satire of Horace: 

**Nunc veterum libris nunc somno et inertibus horis, 
Ducere soUicitas jucunda vitas." 

The books were in cases reaching only half 
way up the ceiling, and above them were hung 
portraits of the greatest literary men of England, 
— Shakespeare, Chaucer, Sydney, Ben Jonson, 
Spencer, Milton. "Curiously enough," says one 
writer, "although the prevailing note in the 
house was French, no great writer of that 
country, not even Moliere, relieved the some- 
what insular effect of this gallery of literary 
great ones in the mansion that belonged to the 
most uninsular of Englishmen. . . ." 

Devonshire and Lansdowne houses share the 
mutual advantage of grounds that join in the 
rear of each house, so that from the windows of 
either mansion which look out on the gardens, 
the vista includes both estates. There is a foot- 

205 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

way running between (leading from Berkeley 
to Curzon Street), but it is sunken so that one 
descends by two or three steps, and thus it is 
almost concealed from view in looking over the 
surface. The unrivaled position of Devonshire 
House and its extensive proportions mark it as 
a typical example of London sglendor. The 
present mansion was built in 1733, and the 
famous Georgiana, the fourth duchess of this 
house, whose social reign was more than royal, 
has left one reminder of her individuality in the 
"blue and silver" room which she designed and 
which has never been altered. The great ball- 
room of Devonshire House, in its white and gold, 
with blue and gold brocade wall-hangings, was 
often the scene of amateur theatrical enter- 
tainments. One of these, a comedy entitled 
"Not so Bad as we Seem", given in 1851, 
in which Dickens appeared taking the role of 
Lord Wilmot, was honored by the presence 
of Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort. 
The salon of this house is gorgeous in the ex- 
treme, with its massive carvings and gildings, 
its domed ceiling painted with arabesques, its 
colossal mirrors, Italian cabinets filled with 
the rarest bric-a-brac, and its Louis Quatorze 
furniture of the period of the First Empire. 
Blended with the decorative arabesques of the 
ceiling is the ducal coronet. The red drawing- 

206 




o 



U 






o 



COLOR AND ROMANCE 

room is hung with scarlet brocade, the circular 
staircase is of wrought iron, gilded, with a glass 
hand-rail often taken for crystal; and the pic- 
tures of the house, already alluded to in these 
pages, include some of the finest of Italian 
masterpieces. The green drawing-room is noted 
for its two Salvator Rosas, of unusual beauty. 
The library has a portrait of Tillotson, sometime 
Archbishop of Canterbury, volumes of choice 
engravings from Marc Antonio, and the Kemble 
collection of English plays. 

Lansdowne House is especially famous for 
its sculpture gallery, of which Doctor Waagen 
(in his *'Art Treasures of Great Britain") says: 

*'The appearance of the sculpture gallery is 
particularly striking, it being rich and tastefully 
adorned with antique sculptures, some of which 
are very valuable for size and workmanship. 
The two ends of the apartment are formed by 
two large apselike recesses, loftier than the 
center. In the large spaces antique marble 
statues, some larger than life, are placed at 
proper distance with crimson drapery behind 
them from which they are most brilliantly re- 
lieved in the evening by electric lights. . . . 
antique statues of smaller size disposed about 
walls and on chimney pieces." 

There is here a bust of the young Hercules, 
found at Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli, one of 

207 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

Marcus Aurelius, discovered in the Appian 
Way, and a colossal bust of Minerva. Pro- 
fessor George Ticknor, the eminent Spanish 
historian, was entertained at Lansdowne House 
during his visit to London of 1838, and of it he 
recorded in his journal: 

"... We were engaged to dine at Lans- 
downe House where we found a very select 
party, in honor of the Duchess of Gloucester, 
daughter of George HI. All the Ministry were 
there; the Duke of Cambridge, the foreign 
ministers. Lord Jeffrey, Lord and Lady Holland, 
the latter of whom is rarely seen anywhere. . . . 
Lady Holland was very gracious and Lord Hol- 
land truly kind and agreeable." 

On another occasion, a little later. Professor 
Ticknor was again dining with Lord and Lady 
Lansdowne, and he writes : 

"It seemed somewhat odd in that truly aris- 
tocratic establishment, to stumble at once 
upon Sydney Smith. . . . We had to wait 
dinner a little for Lord Lansdowne who, as 
president of the Council, had been detained in 
the House of Lords fighting with Brougham, 
whom he pronounced to be more able and more 
formidable than at any previous period of his life. 
Lord Lansdowne seemed in excellent spirits. 
Not so Lady Lansdowne. As she went in to 
dinner, surrounded by the most beautiful mon- 
uments of the arts, and sat down with Canova's 
Venus behind her, she complained to me, natu- 

208 



COLOR AND ROMANCE 

rally and sincerely, of the weariness of a Lon- 
don life. . . . But the talk was brilliant. Senior 
is always agreeable, but by the side of Sydney 
Smith and Jeffrey, of course he put in no claim. 
. . . Lord Jeffrey was full of good things and 
good sayings. Fine talk it was, often brilliant, 
always enjoyable. The subjects were Parlia- 
ment and Brougham ; the theatre, and Macready ; 
reviewing, apropos of which the old reviewers 
hit one another hard; the literature of the day 
which was spoken of lightly; Prescott's 'Ferdi- 
nand and Isabella' which Lord Lansdowne said 
he had bought from its reputation, and which 
Milman in his quiet way praised." 

No palaces on the continent, even those 
of the Doges, surpass in bewildering charm some 
of these London interiors. The most artistic 
of the lesser houses in London is said to be 
Sapphire Lodge, in Westminster, whose salons 
are decorated in the most intense colors so 
blended and softened by the artist as to produce 
notably delicate and harmonious effects. Deep 
blue and green are mingled with gold ; but there 
is nothing bizarre about the combinations; 
and in some of the rooms vellum panels, with 
quotations from the poets inscribed in gold 
letters, are introduced. It is all a sort of re- 
naissance of the Byzantine, yet with a subdued 
brilliancy, as of gems seen through a transparent 
veil. There are suggestions of the mediaeval; 

209 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

there are blendings audacious enough for the 
Futurist; but all is held to a tone of the most 
exquisite art. 

In another of the famous houses in Mayfair 
the scheme of decoration is Indian, and lines 
from the Hindu poet, Tagore, are introduced 
into the scroll-work. In one of the guest-cham- 
bers, half concealed in strange devices of green 
and gold and bronze, with touches of the blue 
of Indian skies, are these lines from the "In- 
finite Love" of Tagore: 

"I have ever loved thee, in a hundred forms and times; 
Age after age, in birth foUownng birth; 
The chaia of songs that my fond heart did weave 

Thou graciously didst take around thy neck 
Age after age, in birth following birth." 

The loiterer in London will easily fall into 
sympathy with the feeling of Thomas Went- 
worth Higginson, who, in his latest visit to the 
old and marvellous city wrote: "I feel as if I 
had just been born. ... I do not see how 
there can be a place in the world more delight- 
ful than London for one who loves both study 
and society." Whatever may be the charms of 
other cities, the lure of London, in the season, is 
that which most holds the endless tide of Amer- 
ican visitors, who feel a kinship with the Eng- 
lish that cannot be equaled with that of any 
other people in Europe. 

210 



VII 

ENGLISH SPORTS AND AMUSEMENTS 

"Boot, saddle, to horse, and away! 
Rescue my castle before the hot day 
Brightens to blue from its silvery gray. 
Cho. — Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!" 

Browning. 

The chariot-races as pictured in the Iliad; the 
horse-races that were introduced into the Olym- 
pic games as early as in 648 B.C., are no more 
an integral part of Greek life than are the athletic 
sports and outdoor amusements of England an 
inseparable factor of the national character. 
To be a "keen sportsman" or a "good shot" 
is apparently the same passport to greatness as 
the D.C.L. conferred by Oxford. It is a fact 
that asserts its prominence, if not, indeed, pre- 
eminence, in a man's life. Let an Englishman 
be scholar or statesman, poet or painter, his 
skill and proficiency in outdoor sports will oc- 
cupy quite as important a place in his biog- 
rapher's account as is given to his learning, or 
his genius. 

Of all this athletic chapter in English life 
the first place is undoubtedly conceded to Ascot. 

211 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

In the early days of June, the visitor in London 
will observe long lines of cabs and motor-cars 
in Bond Street, whose occupants are all ap- 
parently bent on one destination, — Ashton's. 
The source of the attraction stimulates curio- 
sity. But no conjecture would ever arrive at the 
real cause: that at Ashton's the vouchers are 
exchanged for entrance tickets to Ascot. An 
international war could not more ardently 
stir society. Surely, no exposition of art, no 
musical performance, no preacher or prophet, 
could draw such eager throngs. Apparently, 
every one's hopes of earthly felicity hinge on 
securing this magic sesame. The usually staid 
and decorous terminal at Paddington takes on 
strange aspects. Both at Waterloo and at Pad- 
dington all sorts and conditions of men begin 
to pile up all sorts and conditions of luggage 
three weeks before the Ascot date. Small armies 
of footmen, stablemen, and porters watch the gi- 
gantic masses of horses and carriages, furniture, 
provisions, and every conceivable requisite of 
life, which is being shipped, betimes, to Ascot. 
Houses are rented six months in advance. 
Invitations are given out with quite as much in- 
itiative in seizing time by the forelock. 

The student of human history will trace all 
this excitement back to the days of the Iliad, 
and will explain that the Romans learned the 

212 



SPORTS AND AMUSEMENTS 

charm of athletics from the Greeks. It is 
Athelstane, more or less submerged in the 
traditions of the country, who is understood to 
have been the first English king to place the seal 
of his favor on the turf. Barons, lords, and 
knights of his time set the pace. In the Eliza- 
bethan reign there was racing (about 1512) in 
Chester; and under Henry VIII there had been 
contests. Under the Stuarts, in 1600, came 
in Newmarket. In 1814 there was a prize of 
two hundred guineas offered at Goodwood. 
Good Queen Anne is said to have impartially 
divided her affections between horse-racing and 
literature. 

Ascot dates to about 1711, and its location, 
with the most picturesque approach, its favor- 
able configuration for taking care of a crowd as 
well as for the course itself, have combined to 
give it the present importance. The Stuarts 
placed on it the stamp of royal approval; and 
in 1838 England's idolized young queen, Vic- 
toria, went to Ascot in a royal procession of 
seven carriages, and from that day the fortune 
of the place was made. The youthful queen, cos- 
tumed in white lace over pink, with a white 
poke bonnet with roses and ribbons, set the 
stamp of fashion as well as of royal approval on 
this fete. Ascot is all life, music, dress, gaiety, 
movement; it is the dream of the society grande 

213 



THE LURE 'OF LONDON 

dame and of the debutante; the dream of the 
jockey, and of the coster-monger and the hawker 
as well. It ministers to every social degree. As 
a spectacle, it is unequaled. The charming 
landscape, with its luxuriant foliage, its masses 
of flowering shrubs, is entirely dotted over 
with tents, booths, and kiosks. Forty thousand 
people go down. Every mansion in the vicinity 
is taken; every mansion in which its owners re- 
main is the scene of a lavish hospitality. There 
are garden parties, dinners, dances, entertain- 
ments of every kind during Ascot week. The 
unrivalled beauty of the place, the delicious 
exhilaration of the Berkshire air, the excitement 
and stimulus of the races, and the social fes- 
tivities, offer the very elixir of pleasure to the 
pleasure-loving. 

Paddington, the London beginning, is trans- 
formed into a haunt of beauty and fashion. The 
period is not all joy for the railroad officials. 
The demand for extra trains taxes the entire 
resources of English transit. Other roads 
loan trains and men. From one hundred and 
fifty to two hundred extra specials are sent out 
within four days from London to Ascot. The 
early morning trains are beset by that crowd 
of humanity who have an eye to what they 
consider the "main chance," — the venders of 
everything, the betting fraternity, the small 

214 



SPORTS AND AMUSEMENTS 

tradesmen. Later, the trains are filled with the 
spectators of all ranks. At Windsor there is 
a second edition of the Babel of old. For the 
drive of from five to seven miles from Windsor 
to Ascot is a general favorite, and motor-cars and 
coaches, wagonettes, every variety of both public 
and private conveyances are in waiting. The 
route is one of the most lovely in all England. 
The stately and beautiful forest, the herds of 
deer that are seen, the loveliness of the June 
weather, all combine to invest the drive with 
unique charm. For those who prefer to continue 
the journey by rail, the station at Ascot, being 
only ten minutes walk from the grand-stand, is 
convenient to all. It is the harvest time of port- 
ers and guards. Royalty and the aristocracy, 
army and navy, political magnates, beauty and 
fashion, all mingle. At the rear of the grand- 
stand is a lovely lawn, with masses of rhodo- 
dendrons in full bloom, with arbors and seats 
and alluring retreats, where the music of the 
splendid orchestra of the royal artillery is 
enjoyed, and where conversation is general. 
Not the least of its advantages is the back- 
ground it furnishes for the display of Ascot 
costumes. For Ascot gowns are the last word, 
always, of the season's toilettes. Fashions 
are first shown here as at the Grand Prix in 
Paris. The leaders of the mode do not appear 

215 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

in any fantastic styles. The Ascot gowns, are, 
of all things, artistic. Exquisite materials are 
used. The rich and lustrous satins, partially 
veiled with diaphanous fabrics; the daintiest 
embroideries in white muslins and gauzes and 
lace; velvets of softest texture folded in long 
lines of classic grace; rich colors introduced 
with an artist's unerring touch constitute these 
creations. 

The overture, so to speak, of an Ascot day is 
to secure positions. The grand-stand three 
stories in height, with a clock tower on the roof, 
becomes a dazzling parterre of color, with the 
costumes and parasols of the feminine spec- 
tators. Near the rails are dozens of coaches 
drawn up, with ladies seated on the boxes. 
The program of the day opens with the royal 
procession. The course is completely cleared 
of all its varied and miscellaneous crowd; 
every one aims at a vantage ground from which 
to see the royal cavalcade sweep up. From the 
gates of the New Mile a moving color is descried; 
first come the royal huntsmen, and the Master 
of the Buckhounds (the Earl of Coventry), 
spendidly mounted in full regalia, followed by 
mounted outriders in scarlet. Then come the 
carriages, the landaus (each with four horses 
and postilions), and then the royalties are seen; 
the applause breaks out in a storm from the vast 

216 



SPORTS AND AMUSEMENTS 

multitude and does not cease until the august 
personages are seated. It is one of the imposing 
scenes of the world. The loyalty of the English 
to the throne is so ardent and so genuine that 
it communicates its enthusiasm. And the glit- 
ter, the pomp of the pageant, the vividness of 
color, all make up a scene not to be forgotten. 

The royal procession in the June of 1914 was 
an elaborate and impressive spectacle. King 
George and Queen Mary drove from Windsor 
to Ascot; and the cavalcade included Princess 
Henry of Battenburg, Prince Arthur of Con- 
naught, Princess Augusta Victoria, Princess 
Alexander of Teck, and King Manuel. The six 
miles from Windsor Castle to Ascot was literally 
lined with police to guard the royal procession 
from the possible onslaughts of suffragettes. 

Before the racing begins, comes luncheon, 
which again is a study in humanity. The 
Prince of Wales and the Master of the Buck- 
hounds dispense the most lavish hospitalities; 
the Guards and other clubs entertain largely; 
all the private residences are filled with invited 
guests; there are banquets on the roofs of 
the coaches, in the dining-halls, in the Japanese 
tea-rooms; and on a balcony, under a glass roof, 
over which water is continually flowing to insure 
coolness, private tables are reserved, this bal- 
cony being one of the favorite places. After 

217 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

lunch the entire great assemblage hasten to their 
seats. But between the grand-stand and the 
paddock there is a tunnel; ladies are invited to 
inspect the favorite racers, and few women 
lose such an opportunity to display to great ad- 
vantage their elaborate costumes. The pad- 
dock becomes gay with mirth and movement; 
the jockeys don their colors; the spectators 
return to their seats, and the exciting contest 
begins. In 1897, the Jubilee year of Victoria's 
reign, it was the Prince of Wales (later King 
Edward) who most appropriately won the gold 
cup. 

In 1914 Lord Derby won the gold vase given 
by the king. It is valued at a thousand dollars, 
to which two thousand dollars more were added 
as a sweepstake. 

Ascot is really the great social event of the 
year in England. It is now considered far 
more chic than the Grand Prix, and more de- 
termining in the seal that it sets upon the man- 
dates of fashion. 

The Derby is the greatest purely racing affair 
of the English turf. Since 1820, Derby Day 
has been an universal holiday, and the social 
panorama on Epsom Downs is a spectacle 
of varied throngs. Not infrequently, indeed, 
the assemblage comprises from one to two 

218 



SPORTS AND AMUSEMENTS 

hundred thousand people, drawn from all parts 
of Great Britain. Fifty thousand pounds will 
be spent in a day. The Derby stake is from 
seven thousand pounds upward, and the race 
is witnessed in the greatest excitement. 

The two Newmarket meetings, that are 
scheduled to take place early in July, usually 
some two or three weeks after Ascot, are always 
considered delightful occasions, provided that 
the weather is good. This course is a splendid 
ribbon of turf hundreds of years old, lying 
between the broad Plantation and the Ditch. 
The paddock is so arranged that from it one 
may wander into the forest, which is trans- 
formed into one vast picnic scene, and where the 
throngs of people may find tea, ices, and what- 
ever refreshments may be desired. From all 
this region on the side of the paddock an excel- 
lent view of the course is obtained, and crowds 
of spectators watch the races from this vantage 
ground. This present year three hundred thou- 
sand people, it was estimated, watched the 
course. The great spectacle is held fifteen miles 
out of London, the route being through elm- 
shaded lanes of magnificent foliage, which 
are thronged with motor-cars and motor-busses, 
and by pedestrians as well, for hundreds of 
Londoners make the journey by walking. 

Epsom Downs is a favorite encampment of 

219 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

the gypsies on Derby Day, and hundreds of 
their vans are scattered about, while the women, 
eager to have their palms crossed with silver, 
and swarms of children, whose appearance sug- 
gests imminent need of the laundry, dance 
about, with tambourines and miniature drums. 
The grounds are entirely free, which may ac- 
count for the immense and motley throngs that 
completely preempt every inch of space; but 
there are numberless small enclosures near the 
stand to which a modest admission fee is charged, 
varying from a sixpence to a sovereign. 

The king and queen attend, but with no such 
splendor of entrance as at Ascot. Gypsy chil- 
dren seem to be the keenest in discovering the 
royal presence, and they pursue the royal equi- 
page for the coins that the king, following the 
tradition for generations, flings to them. There 
is no band of musicians with their stirring strains, 
and the wandering minstrels, with guitar and 
concertina, only serve to make the noise more 
unendurable and to fill the air with lugubrious 
echoes. 

Nothing contributes more to the open-air en- 
joyments of London than does the Thames. 
From the regattas to private parties who charter 
boats and whose festas are brilliant scenes on 
the illuminated river, its resources range; and 

220 




3 

Oh 



a 

o 

p 



pq 



3 

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SPORTS AND AMUSEMENTS 

there are evening fetes on it not unworthy of 
Venice in beauty and enchantment. It is a 
delightful way by which to journey to Kew, to 
the alluring Botanic Gardens, or to Hampton 
Court, and the waterway to Richmond is always 
a favorite one. The Henley rowing regatta 
is a picturesque sight, and that the grand 
challenge Cup for 1914 was won by the Boston 
Union Crew does not diminish American interest. 
This is the fourth time, only, that the Cup has 
ever left England. In 1906 it was captured 
by the Royal Nautical Club of Belgium; and 
again, by the same club, in 1907 and 1909; in 
1912 the Cup was awarded to New South 
Wales. 

It is beginning to be questioned as to whether 
cricket, which has been the great national game 
of England, is declining and yielding something 
of its popularity to sports that gratify the taste 
of the hour for speed. People flock to see the 
game that is the fastest and most furious, and 
if cricket cannot hold its own with these con- 
ditions, then must it go to the wall. The Athe- 
nians of old continually demanded something 
new. The twentieth-century denizen demands 
something swift. It may be good, bad, or in- 
different, in other respects, but it must be 
fleet-footed, or be ignored. Celerity is the one 
indispensable condition. During June of the 

221 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

present year there were played on the same after- 
noon a game of cricket between the M. C. C. 
South African team, and the "Rest" of England, 
at Lord's; and a game of lawn tennis, at Wim- 
bledon, between Norman Brookes, the Aus- 
tralian champion, and J. G. Ritchie of England. 
While over five thousand people journeyed to 
Wimbledon to see the latter, the former was 
witnessed by less than three thousand, although, 
other things being equal, cricket is far more in- 
teresting than lawn tennis. League Club cricket 
holds a sway, however, which, if not preeminent, 
is at least one with which to reckon. For 
League cricket holds a record for speed. The 
League matches begin at two in the afternoon 
and continue without intermission until seven; 
with no intervening tea, or talk, or diversion of 
any kind. And if either side is unpunctual, it 
is fined. Football, too, is one of the most uni- 
versal of sports. Every town has its continual 
exhibitions of this prowess, often with two games 
a week from September till May, when the cur- 
tain is rung down on it for the summer. In 
April the great final for the English Cup is 
played at the Crystal Palace. This League game 
is the greatest day of the football year. Often 
more than a hundred thousand spectators gather 
at Sydenham to watch this contest. The con- 
querors issue touching memorials for the con- 

222 



SPORTS AND AMUSEMENTS 

quered. Slips of paper, with the cheering picture 
of a hearse at the top, are inscribed "in loving 
memory of" so-and-so, "who died whilst fighting 
for the English Cup against" — so-and-so. And 
there follow the lines : 

"Boldly to the fray they went 

But got beaten to their sorrow; 
They were put to rout by a better team. 
And the funeral is to-morrow." 

Football, indeed, has its own following, and 
a not inconsiderable one. The London City 
Council makes official provision, every year, 
for eight thousand football matches in the parks 
during the season. The game between the re- 
nowned "Casuals" and the London "Caledo- 
nians " at Tufnell Park, is a momentous event 
to those of the football world; and the Rugby 
section, the 'Varsity matches, are known all 
over the kingdom. When the League team 
contends at Woolworth and at Tottenham 
a crowd is attracted whose wild excitement ex- 
ceeds that caused by a foreign war. They shout 
themselves hoarse; they forget the various other 
concerns of the universe in this wild excitement. 
Battersea and Regent parks are favorite foot- 
ball grounds. Even at St. Paul's Cathedral 
Choir school, the students utilize the roof as 
a football field. 

223 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

The South London, and the Black Heath 
Harriers, with their bewildering trails, are one 
of the forms of diversion followed by throngs of 
sportsmen, whose leaders invite them to a pretty 
dance over cross-country routes, indicated by 
the paper trails, over hills and woods and bram- 
bles and obstacles of all descriptions. 

The hunting season lasts for months, the 
*'meet" taking place once a week usually, the 
master of the hounds leading the chase, and the 
mounted followers, both men and women, en- 
joy the exciting race. 

The Brass Band concerts, as they are termed, 
are an inseparable feature of out-door English 
life. Every town and village has its band that 
plays in the open air once or twice a week, or 
more; and they have an annual contest each 
spring at the Crystal Palace, at which each 
member of the bands plays a solo in addition to 
his part in the entire ensemble. 

One of the most picturesque things is the 
scene on Hampstead Heath on Bank Holiday, 
when London literally empties itself on this im- 
mense and beautiful open space. It occurs 
early in August, when all Society is off to the 
continent. Usually the English holiday is a pro- 

224 



SPORTS AND AMUSEMENTS 

longed process, affording time enough to cross 
the Channel, or to make a tour over the en- 
tire country, or perhaps (at least when the 
airship has become perfected) to go around the 
world. But this holiday is for only one day and 
its merrymakers cannot go far afield. To Hamp- 
stead, then, in its alluring space, and beauty of 
sky and scene, they fare forth, and the heath is 
one gigantic picnic. Amusements of all kinds 
abound. The bowling experts find their banks; 
there are golf links, tennis grounds, cricket 
matches, football, and races. Almost every ath- 
letic sport is enjoyed, and one of the features, 
and by no means the least, is the gathering of 
the costers and their wives. For them Bank 
Holiday on Hampstead Heath is Ascot Day. It 
is their great occasion of display. The costers 
are in velvet trousers, and their wives make a 
brave parade of ostrich feathers. Their finery is 
the most conspicuous part of the scene. Their 
carts contain everything that can be thought of, 
almost, in the way of viands and their accom- 
paniments; and the venders have also a mis- 
cellaneous assortment in their carts that remind 
one of the booths of the market-place in Piazza 
San Lorenzo in Florence. To those unhappy 
"dwellers on the threshold " of Hampstead Heath 
or Highgate Fields, the early hours of the dawn 
of a bank holiday are rendered hideous. The 

225 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

oncoming revelers murder sleep with an unerr- 
ing power that rivals that of Macbeth. The 
clatter of carts and donkeys, the whir of the cy- 
clists, the heavy vans, ponderously thundering 
over the road, the shouts and laughter of the 
costers with their carts and barrows, make repose 
a thing impossible from long before sunrise. 
All these merrymakers have risen with the lark 
to secure the best places on the pleasure grounds. 
The road, for miles, is lined with carts and bar- 
rows and teams of all sorts. The motley crowd 
is reinforced by nine o'clock by the crowds who 
are not out as venders, but as patrons. Jack 
and Jill are affectionately linked together, wear- 
ing each other's hats as further pledges and 
prophecies of their undying devotion. The 
small boy, with his tin trumpet or his penny 
bagpipe, contributes his full quota to the pre- 
vailing gaiety. And gaiety is apparently held 
as proportional to noise. The shot heard round 
the world is not to be compared with the volume 
of sound that afflicts the air. The crowd dis- 
perse themselves over the grounds, completely 
effacing grass, flowers, shrubs, in a vast, seething 
sea of humanity. The side-shows would rival 
the "Midway" of a national exposition. All 
manner of fantastic tricks are in evidence. 
From forecasts of one's future destiny for the 
reasonable price of "thrippence" to the ascer- 

226 



SPORTS AND AMUSEMENTS 

taining of one's avoirdupois, the handling of 
galvanic batteries with a view to "shocks", the 
purchase of toys, mechanical devices, candies of 
every hue of the spectrum, birds that chirp and 
mysteriously turn into something else, nuts, 
fruits, and many things less innocent which shall 
be nameless here, the allurements range. 

Golf, Boxing Day, the theatrical garden-party 
of music-hall London, foot-races, all these and 
other athletic diversions hold no unimportant 
place in English life. Every Polytechnic school 
has its gymnasium, and the Sandow system is 
much in favor. Yachting and boating would 
require a volume to do any justice to their 
place in the national life. 

Whether all these athletic activities are es- 
pecially edifying or not, it is, however, true that 
no chronicle, however slight in aim or frag- 
mentary in execution, that took English life for 
its province, could omit the recognition of the 
considerable place held in it by these outdoor 
sports and amusements. 

Cycling is greatly in favor in England, and no 
aspect of life in the open is more beneficial. It is 
the recreation of the student as well as of the 
sportsman. It permits explorations, geological 
expeditions, sketching excursions, and is the 
elixir of life to the writer. The Cycle Clubs are 
a feature all over England, formed for mutual 

227 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

information and aid. They have lists of all 
places where lodging or board can be obtained, 
and the respective prices. Their maps show the 
best routes, the best roads, and offer all manner 
of information valuable to the tourist. Women 
as well as men are expert cyclers, and there are 
few forms of holiday enjoyment out of which 
more genuine benefit can be extracted than these 
cycling tours. 



VIII 

FACTORS, PERSONAL FORCES, AND CUSTOMS 

"In the years that shall be ye shall harness the Powers of the ether. 
And drive them with reins as a steed. 

For a man shall set his hand to a handle, and wither 

Invisible armies and fleets; 

And a lonely man with a breath shall exterminate armies. 

With a whisper annihilate fleets. 

And soul shall speak unto soul; I weary of tongues; 

I weary of battle and strife. 

Lo! I am the bonder and knitter together of spirits, 

I dispense with nations and shores. 

In that day shall a man out of uttermost India whisper 
And in England his friend shall hear. 
And a maiden in English sunshine have sight of her lover 
And he behold her from Cathay." 

Stephen Phillips. 

In the bewildering range of great mechanical 
achievements which especially characterize Eng- 
land, by what unerring touchstone shall one 
discern and select those which constitute the 
forces of the day? There are myriads of forces, 
both personal and those produced by the pres- 
sure and the resultant effects of circumstance 
and event; but the industrial situation, while it 
may not be of the highest importance if esti- 
mated from the ideal and permanent standards 
of life, is yet the very foundation of all nobler 

229 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

achievement. It would be a poor specimen of 
humanity who did not desire to give his children 
educational advantages; to fit them to enter on 
that larger world to which those are the key; and 
while it is more easy for Mr. Shaw to proclaim 
that all incomes should be equal than to point 
out the precise process by means of which this 
desirable result (if it is desirable) can be ef- 
fected, yet no one who sees from the watch-tower 
the great panorama of human life will deny that 
this question of income is a very vital and in- 
tensely important problem that must be con- 
fronted, if not solved. Within the past five 
years Mr. Keir Hardie called the nation's at- 
tention to the fact that despite the important 
increase in the national income, the working 
classes were no better off than when this revenue 
was far less. Mr. Mallock rose to the occasion 
and instructed the Parliamentarian that this 
was due to the increasing ability of employers 
and capitalists and noted inventors, and that 
the working man had nothing to do with its 
growth, and that he had no claim on any of its 
benefits. Mr. Mallock's exposition of finance, 
his interpretation of the industrial situation, 
were as a spark to a powder magazine in relation 
to Mr. Bernard Shaw. No knight of the Arthu- 
rian Age ever more instantaneously leaped into 
the tournament with more joyful abandon than 

230 



FACTORS AND CUSTOMS 

Mr. Shaw seized that vital pen of his and pro- 
ceeded to annihilate Mr. Mallock. 

"The notion that the people who are now 
spending in week-end hotels, in motor-cars, in 
Switzerland, the Riviera, and Algiers the re- 
markable increase in unearned incomes noted 
by Mr. Keir Hardie, have ever invented any- 
thing, ever directed anything, ever even selected 
their own investments without the aid of a 
stockbroker or solicitor; that they have ever so 
much as seen the industries from which their 
incomes are derived, betrays not only the most 
rustic ignorance of economic theory, but a 
practical ignorance of society so incredible in a 
writer of Mr. Mallock's position that I find it ex- 
ceedingly difficult to persuade my fellow Social- 
ists that he really believes what he teaches. . . . 
This is not a question," Mr. Shaw emphasizes, 
"between the Socialist and the anti-Socialist; 
it is a question of the difference between the 
gentleman and the cad. Lord Lansdowne is 
not a Socialist; but Lord Lansdowne has not 
asked for the hundreds of millions he saved 
Europe by making our treaty with Japan, and 
Lord Charles Beresford, if the German fleet 
attacked ours, would not refuse to conduct our 
naval defense unless the country were to be given 
to him as prize money when he had saved it." ^ 

No such vital questions as are involved in 
these paragraphs had arisen to seriously disturb 

1 " Socialism and Superior Brains." New York: John Lane 
Company. 

231 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

the philosophic calm of the deliberations of 
John Stuart Mill, whose comprehension, how- 
ever, of the unmeasured possibilities of the 
future, and whose liberal and generous sym- 
pathies were undeniably ranged on the side of 
the highest justice and the right of every man to 
the fullest development. The nineteenth cen- 
tury was a period of much smouldering discon- 
tent, from the time of Carlyle's clarion calls on 
nothing in particular but on everything in gen- 
eral, to arise and do . . . something or other! 
The influence of the French Revolution was felt 
in all its vigor, affecting literature as well as 
thought and discussion. 

The working man of the present is not so 
much in any personal controversy with his em- 
ployer as he is with the entire industrial system 
which is on its trial for reconstruction. But 
coexistent, at least, with the power of that justice 
and eloquence that should move men — and 
even parliaments — is the element of scientific 
advance. Every new applied invention of im- 
portance does more, and makes itself a more 
effective agency for the betterment of mankind 
than could the passing of any law, however wise 
and just. Science is leading the present civiliza- 
tion to developments undreamed of. In every 
direction of human life new avenues open, dis- 
closing vistas whose horizon line is by no means 

232 



FACTORS AND CUSTOMS 

a final boundary, but which is merely the limit 
of present vision. As man advances, this hori- 
zon line recedes ; that which was of the unknown 
is grasped and incorporated into service; and 
other avenues, heretofore undescried, open with 
beckoning attraction. Man is achieving the 
higher consciousness; he is becoming aware of 
regions that have not only never been pene- 
trated, but which have been supposed to be im- 
penetrable. There are no fixed lines, however, 
that the increasing spiritual development of 
mankind will not pass. The universe is open to 
him who has the key and the clue. The con- 
quering forces of the age are those of insight, 
creative imagination, courage; of intellectual 
power and enterprise; of spiritual penetration. 
This age is to initiate a new phase of human 
experience. A new kingdom is opening, and one 
of whose infinite possibilities the loftiest and 
boldest imagination can form no conception. 
When Columbus crossed the ocean, the fact that 
its crossing was thus demonstrated to be a pos- 
sibility was the least important in estimating 
its magnitude. No recognition then dawned of 
the marvellous civilization that was to follow 
that mechanical triumph. The analogy holds 
true regarding man's initial advance into the 
new kingdom of the air. 

It is conceivable that the time is not far dis- 

233 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

tant when the aeroplane journey between Lon- 
don and Paris shall become a feature of daily 
life. It is interesting to recall that the first 
steamship to cross the Atlantic was the SiriuSy 
in the spring of 1838; and that when, in June of 
that year, Professor George Ticknor (the emi- 
nent Spanish historian) was about returning from 
England with his family, he chose to embark 
on a sailing ship rather than the newly-estab- 
lished steamer, because he "did not think it wise 
to risk the safety of his family on such a new ex- 
periment." It would seem, then, that seventy- 
six years ago, navigation by steam power was 
hardly more advanced than is aeronautics at 
the present time. Does it not logically follow 
that within an equal number of years, well 
within the present century, the aeroplane may 
have as entirely superseded the steamer in in- 
ternational navigation, as within these past 
seventy-six years the steamer has superseded the 
sailing craft? That exhilarating writer, Mr. 
H. G. Wells, a very crystal-gazer into the occult 
future, thus prophesies: 

"The history of the immediate future will, I 
am convinced, be very largely the history of the 
conflict of the needs of this new population 
with the institutions, the boundaries, the laws, 
prejudices, and deep-rooted traditions estab- 
lished during the home-keeping, localized era 
of mankind's career." 

234 



FACTORS AND CUSTOMS 

It is interesting to speculate as to what 
changes in the physical organism of man may ac- 
company this possible change of environment 
and conditions. What larger unfolding of con- 
sciousness, what new ideals of conduct, what 
general changes in the conditions of daily life 
may be involved in "the new kind of people" 
whom Mr. Wells discerns in the future.'^ What 
will be the hall-mark of the coming civilization.'^ 
Mr. Wells foresees that the race will become 
nomadic, what with "this astonishing develop- 
ment of Mauretanias, aeroplanes, mile-a-minute 
expresses, tubes, motor-busses, and motor-cars. 
It dissolves almost all the reason and necessity 
why men should go on living permanently in 
any one place or rigidly disciplined to any one 
set of conditions," concludes England's witty 
forecaster of the international horoscope. 

With the forecast of another set of social 
possibilities, one sees the experimental working 
of another form of transit, the flying railroad, 
which was as undreamed of in England, until 
within the past few months, as was the motor- 
car in the mid-Victorian age. This is the Levi- 
tated railway, the invention of Monsieur Emile 
Bachelet, for holding the car, or the train, sus- 
pended in air, for any distance, the impulse 
being supplied by successive circles of magnets, 
and which, by the elimination of all friction save 

235 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

that caused by the resistance of the air, will 
permit a speed of three hundred miles an hour. 
This invention at once dispenses with the loco- 
motive, the tracks, wheels, and gearings, and 
requires no engine of any kind. M. Bachelet 
has already patented this invention in Great 
Britain, France, Germany, Sweden and Nor- 
way, Denmark, Austria, Italy, and in Japan. 
The General Manager of the Great Central 
Railroad in England arranged for the trial of 
this invention on land parallel with the road 
lines, between Wycombe and Harrow, to demon- 
strate its utility. Its first service is that of 
carrying mail matter, and no passengers will be 
taken until thorough tests are made. The 
development promises to cover an enormous 
field of usefulness. Monsieur Bachelet, its in- 
ventor and consulting engineer of the company, 
feels that it should supersede existing methods, 
and give greater service in the many cases 
where it is important to minimize friction, or 
where weights require to be lifted. Apparently, 
man is only beginning to find his true place in 
the universe. 

Every increase in the rate of speed, every 
decrease in cost, adds to the resources of civi- 
lization. Already the development of swift and 
cheap transit facilities has had an enormous 
effect upon London's professional and indus- 

236 



FACTORS AND CUSTOMS 

trial ranks. It has little, if any at all, on the 
very poor, for they have no power to change their 
locality, to take advantage of better conditions. 
The local transit of London by motor-bus is at 
very low rates. For twopence one can go a 
long distance, three miles, or so; though it must 
also be remembered that the twopence of Great 
Britain is four cents in our currency. Losing 
sight of this, as an American invariably does, 
everything in London seems cheaper than it 
really is. 

But there is one feature of English life that 
can hardly escape even the least thoughtful and 
observing of travelers. And this is that while 
the majority of prices are very reasonable, not 
to say strikingly low, from an American stand- 
point, the insistence on the uttermost fraction 
of these small sums is amusing. In a shop one 
inquires the price per yard of a given fabric. 
*'Five shillings, ha' penny, and three farthings," 
replies the salesman. "Five shillings," medi- 
tatively repeats the inquirer, mentally trans- 
lating it into a dollar and a quarter. "And 
ha' penny, three farthings," promptly responds 
the salesman. The sojourner in London will 
discover that everything has its exact price, and 
it is insisted upon to the last and uttermost 
farthing. Shylock was not more immovable in 
demanding the pound of flesh. An illustrative 

£37 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

experience is that of one of the staff of the 
Boston PubKc Library; a woman holding an 
important position, and one of the special ex- 
perts in library work. With some nine thou- 
sand volumes under her immediate jurisdiction, 
and many years of experience lying behind her, 
she would be considered a harmless, not to say, 
welcome visitor in any of the great libraries of 
Europe. Had a library expert of similar quali- 
fications and claims arrived from England, and 
sought to visit the public libraries of Boston, 
New York, Chicago, the splendid Congressional 
Library in Washington, or any other, the visitor 
would have been welcomed as an honored guest. 
This lady, moreover, was equipped with a gen- 
eral letter of introduction to library officials, 
given her by Horace G. Wadlin, Librarian of 
the Boston Public Library, setting forth her 
position, and suggesting that any courtesies 
shown to her in the libraries abroad would be 
gladly appreciated and reciprocated. Armed 
with this delightful document that supposedly 
would have been an open sesame to the library 
world, the lady entered the British Museum. 
Explaining that she was an official of the Boston 
Public Library, and wished to see the workings 
of the Museum, the attendant made no reply 
but silently pointed to a desk. This occu- 
pant likewise refrained from the exertion of 

238 



FACTORS AND CUSTOMS 

vocal speech, but handed her a slip of paper 
and pointed to the doorkeeper. This cabalistic 
method of communication began to fascinate 
her; she calmly walked in with her gaze fixed 
on the magic of that circular room under the 
great dome, when the attendant caught her 
arm, and shaking his head with the air of one 
of the Hellenic gods on a battlefield, waited 
for her to interpret his ominous attitude. In 
this instance it was not the absence of a fee 
that produced this treatment, but the fact, 
which she at last extracted, that she had not 
come '* introduced by her bankers", as is the 
English custom. 

At the Bodleian, however, the national cus- 
tom of the fee, however slight, presented itself. 

"Crossing a court surrounded by some ex- 
quisitely old buildings," she narrates, "I climbed 
an antiquated staircase to the library, calmly 
ignoring a sign which informed visitors that 
twopence was the fee, for had n't I a right, 
as a member of the craft, to enter? Passing 
through a swinging gate beyond a few old- 
fashioned pieces of furniture, I walked down the 
aisle of a small, square room furnished with 
alcoves. The ceiling was painted in rich tones 
with heraldic devices. To be sure we have in 
the Boston Library ceilings quite as magnificent, 
but not an heraldic one in colors. A youth 
breathlessly pursued me. 'You're not allowed 

239 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

in here!' he exclaimed. I thought of the official 
document with which I was equipped by Doctor 
Wadlin's courtesy, addressed 'To all Libraries, 
Custodians of Galleries, etc.,' on Boston's best 
official paper, beautifully decorated with a seal 
that was in itself enough to charm the heart 
of any official, so replying to my pursuer that 
I had a letter to the Librarian and inquiring 
where that individual could be found, I passed 
on in the peace of an approving conscience. 
The youth led me to a small desk, where a man 
clad in a gown and mortar-board sat on a high 
stool with the immovable air of a statue. I 
handed him my document. Glancing at it he 
observed: 'But this does not concern me; it is 
not a personal letter to me!' I explained. 
'But this is not pare-son-al to Me,' he repeated 
with the precision of a phonograph. Again I 
explained. 'But you should have brought a 
pare-son-al letter to Me,' was his only reply." 

However, he finally offered to show her some 
rare book; but after five minutes she took her 
leave, and, turning to a museum on another 
floor, was solemnly informed that the fee was 
tuppence, which she duly paid, and thus ter- 
minated her visit to the famous Bodleian. 
Nothing could be more inimitably typical. A 
fee is a fee, and is not to be remitted to any ac- 
credited visitor, whatever the credentials. 

The English porter, like the poet, is born, not 
made. He is guide, philosopher, and friend. He 

240 



FACTORS AND CUSTOMS 

is the compensation for all other terrestrial ills 
that flesh is heir to. You at once relinquish your- 
self and all your earthly treasures to his care. 
He bestows you in a motor-car; he assures you 
that he will at once materialize before your 
longing eyes with all your precious impedimenta; 
you relinquish to him your bits of paper which 
do duty for baggage checks in England with the 
same confidence as that with which you sink into 
a softly-cushioned seat in the Chapel Royal, 
quite sure that you are to assist at a service of 
irreproachable dignity. And instead of frantic 
demands for lire and centissirai, his reply in 
answer to what you shall pay him is: "Just 
what you please. Lady." In the rush of grati- 
tude for his perfection of service, you feel like 
handing over your entire bank account. If 
there is anything within a very wide range of 
his calling that the railway porter does not 
know, it would be interesting to ascertain what 
that exception is. He is a special creation, 
and his duplicate cannot be found elsewhere. 
Among the factors of transit he holds an unap- 
proached place. 

What are the factors and forces that create 
and control the conditions in London .f* Of the 
former the systems of local transit are facile 
princeps. The motor-busses are as definite in 
periodicity and in accommodations as is any 

241 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

railroad system; the Tube seems to defy the 
faultfinder, with its perfect ventilation, its clean- 
liness, the clear directions at every change, and 
the perfection of its service. The old "under- 
ground" steam service of London is now trans- 
formed into the Metropolitan, and supplements 
the Tube, pending the further and complete 
extension of that unrivalled means of locomo- 
tion. The motor-taxi is so reasonable in price 
as, by a paradox, to nearly reduce one to bank- 
ruptcy. In our own country, where your taxi 
requires a king's ransom every time you enter 
it, you do not, naturally, indulge in the luxury 
except on occasions. But where you can fly any- 
where, almost, in a taxi for a shilling, and for 
twice that, or so, can go to the ends of the earth 
and carry with you all your earthly goods, why, 
it is flying in the face of Providence not to go 
about in taxis. A taxicab from Piccadilly or 
Hyde Park Corner to Euston Station w411 con- 
vey one or two passengers, as the case may be, 
and]all their luggage (if within the possible limits 
of getting it on, and the amount the chauffeur 
will contrive to affix to one vehicle passes im- 
agination) for "one-and-six" — thirty cents, 
strictly speaking, in American currency. If to 
that one adds the modest pourboire of a six- 
pence, he is fully satisfied. All this is incredi- 
ble, but even the incredible is sometimes true. 

242 



FACTORS AND CUSTOMS 

To the tourist the hotel conditions and the 
local transit regulations are matters of funda- 
mental importance. They are the basis of his 
comfort and they fix, to a great degree, his ca- 
pacity for making the most of his time in Lon- 
don. And these conditions are exceedingly good. 
There are few hotels that are not characterized 
by kindliness as well as courtesy, and while the 
English have their own ways of management, 
their ways offer much that is enjoyable. The 
English hotel does not offer the decorative 
scheme usually found in Paris and in the better 
class of hotels in Italy; the clock on the mantel 
in every private room, so invariable in Paris; 
and the little green-shaded, electric reading- 
lamp, at the head of the bed, almost invariable 
in Paris and in Italy, is seldom found in London. 
The intellectual processes of Imperial Britain 
(which, one must concede, are usually of an 
order to compel consideration) conceive of the 
nocturnal retirement as the immediate forerun- 
ner of sleep. They take no cognizance of that 
state of transition which the poets know. "I 
keep my pillows stuffed with novels," said Mrs. 
Browning; and this supreme luxury of the 
shaded lamp, the little table at one's hand 
piled with romance and poetry, the seclusion 
that effaces, for the time being, all the day- 
light duties and leaves one untrammelled to 

243 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

wander into magic realms, are conditions quite 
outside the ken of those to whom sleep is a 
legitimate purpose for nightly retirement. The 
private rooms are furnished with an eye to sup- 
posed utility, with regulation furniture, good of 
its kind, and personal preferences as to reading 
in bed are not considered. 

But after things, come people. Of these, 
whom does one find in London .^^ If the im- 
portance of influence were to be estimated by 
frequency of mention, Mr. Bernard Shaw and 
Mr. H. G. Wells are, perhaps, after the king 
and Mr. Asquith, or Lloyd George, the men 
whose names are most audibly sounding in the 
air. The king is the king, and the Archbishop 
of Canterbury holds a place a little lower than 
the angels, perhaps, but Lambeth Palace is a 
most definite object in the immediate horizon, 
and Buckingham Palace and the royal family 
are as much a fact as the eternal laws of the 
universe, except, of course, by those who would 
abolish royal palaces and royalty, and those 
are not yet in the ascendent majority. 

The character and genius of Lloyd George 
are favorite and fruitful subjects for discussion. 
"How is Mr. Lloyd George to be diagnosed.^" 
Is he to be judged by his faults, which seem to 
be, at most, those of a self-assertiveness not 

244 




03 



3 
M 



W 



o 



a 

o 

o 



FACTORS AND CUSTOMS 

far removed from audacity, or by his excellent 
qualities and undeniable gifts? 

It is as easy as it is useless to prepare an 
enumeration of what Mr. George is not. Eng- 
land abounds in University men, in scholars, 
in men keenly alive to all that makes for culture 
and that sweet reasonableness that Matthew 
Arnold strove so untiringly to inculcate. High 
scholarship and sweet reasonableness are very 
desirable possessions; but when the ship is 
foundering in the waves, the most uncultured 
seaman may be of more immediate importance 
to her passengers than the savant who would 
grace the chair of any college. The analogy is 
not inappropriate. England is in a crisis state. ^ 
The smouldering revolt of years came to open 
demonstrations in the summer of 1911, and 
although the great strikes and many other im- 
minent dangers were tided over, they are not 
exterminated. Lloyd George has clearly per- 
ceived the real springs of much of the discontent, 
the clamor, and the resentment of masses of 
men who feel existing wrongs without being at 
all able to formulate any remedy for them. 
Mr. George is no philosophic economist. If he 
saw a man starving, he would probably give 
him food first and consider the remote causes 
that led up to that condition of famine later, — 

1 June, 1914. 
245 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

if, indeed, he considered them at all. He has 
manifested much of the impetuosity of the 
reformer. That he is a man of genuine sym- 
pathies with the victims of social injustice is un- 
questionable. He has a most remarkable range 
of resourcefulness and a power of instant decision 
that is not invariably fortunate in the direc- 
tion it takes. He has the defects of his qualities, 
or some of the defects, but his very mistakes 
are those of a generous and great nature. Mr. 
Lowell has etched with two or three sharp 
strokes a type of character that is of all most 
to be feared. It is that of the individual who 

"... never errs. 
And yet is never nobly right." 

It is the type most inimical to a nation's good. 
Better a thousand times the very errors and 
mistakes of a lofty, enthusiastic, but too im- 
pulsive nature who does not deal out 

"... a charity, scrimped and iced 
In the name of a cautious, statistical Christ." 

What has Lloyd George done.^^ In the face 
of good report and of evil report, he has gone 
on with courage, with marvellous efficiency, 
with vigorous executive power. The inscruta- 
ble future waits to be revealed. 

246 



FACTORS AND CUSTOMS 

In an entirely different, and in many re- 
spects a more cosmopolitan way, in a manner 
appealing less to his own country than to the 
world at large, Mr. Bernard Shaw has been 
much in the latter-day limelight. He has been 
the advocate of equality of incomes, and of the 
superman, and various other attractive things, 
which are, perhaps, by their very nature, far 
more easy to advocate than to provide. That 
Mr. Shaw is one of the personal forces of the 
hour cannot be denied. He is unconventional 
by nature and grace; he is hardly as cynical 
as he would have us believe; and under his jest- 
ing runs a strong current of sincerity and good- 
will. The world is helped onward by many 
different orders of influence, and that it is helped 
by Mr. Shaw toward a clearer vision of a per- 
fected humanity cannot be denied. In fact, 
the man who compels people to think; the critic 
of life who arouses a new scrutiny of existing 
conditions, is a man who inevitably inspires 
humanity with a larger vision and with ulti- 
mately higher standards. He may be more 
iconoclastic than constructive, but he has his 
work to do. Through nearly all his plays is a 
vitality of suggestion that cannot but set the 
minds of those who see them aglow. He has a 
legitimate message. He calls upon every man 
and woman to live his life to the uttermost; 

247 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

"use your health even to the point of wearing 
it out," he will say. "That is what it is for. 
Spend all you have before you die, and do not 
outlive yourself." With Tennyson, Mr. Shaw 
feels that: 

"'Tis life with which our nerves are scant:" 

He asks mankind what the world is for, with 
its infinite opportunities, its ceaseless demands. 
What is the world doing with man? What is 
man doing with the world .^ Without the 
slightest trace of conscious imitation, George 
Bernard Shaw is yet the English Ibsen. As a 
Socialist, he offers no very definite doctrine; it 
is enough for him to make man discontented 
with former doctrines. He contributes liberally 
to the entertainment of the hour, but he does 
more than this; even the entertainment enfolds 
a seed of truth that takes root in the minds of 
at least a part of the hearers and germinates 
and develops. It is the dull wit that portrays 
him only as a poseur. With the throngs who 
flock to his plays; who fill every available space 
when he is to lecture; who recount his mots 
as seen in the papers, Mr. Shaw is wielding a 
tremendous influence, and it is as true as it is 
creditable to him that it is an influence toward 
justice and righteousness. To tear down the 
false is to make room for the true. There are 

248 



FACTORS AND CUSTOMS 

many orders among the great deliverers of 
mankind. 

The constructive idealism of Mr. Wells is 
another of the forces of English life to-day. At 
the time of the coronation of King George, 
Mr. Wells indulged in a train of speculative 
reflection that imaged a panorama of wonder- 
ful possibilities for the future. 

''Supposing," he wrote, "that we have a king 
at last who cares for the advancement of science 
. . . one who is willing to do the hundred things 
that are so easy in his position to increase re- 
search, to honor and to share in scientific 
thought. . . . 

"Suppose we have a king who rises above the 
level of the court artist and who not only can, 
but will appeal to the latent and discouraged 
power of artistic creation in our race? For Eng- 
land is no exhausted or decaying country. It 
is rich with an unmeasured capacity for gen- 
erous response. . . . 

Sources of influence are as impossible to 
number as the stars in the heavens, or the sands 
on the seashore. The wind bloweth where it 
listeth. Nor are the sources of high mental 
energy invariably to be sought in contemporary 
life. The Past is one with the Present. 

No thoughtful observer can deny that many 
of the clergy of the Church of England exercize 
a far wider influence than that limited to ques- 

249 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

tions of creed, or liturgical problems, or eccle- 
siastical concerns of any order. *'How is it," 
asks one, "that the Church of England has lost 
its hold upon the working man?" It has not 
lost its hold upon the working man. While 
such a man as the great Randall Thomas David- 
son, the present Archbishop of Canterbury, is 
at its head; while such a man as the present 
Bishop of London continues his work with its 
breadth of sympathetic comprehension of the 
conditions of the less fortunate classes, and his 
ceaseless personal ministry among them; while 
that great Nonconformist, Reverend R. J. 
Campbell, preaches such epoch-making sermons 
in the City Temple, supplementing and ex- 
tending it by ceaseless and almost innumerable 
activities in secular directions, the Church will 
not and cannot lose its hold upon the working 
man. 

Then, too, London is rich in schools for 
the working classes. The many Polytechnic 
institutes, the University College, the Work- 
ing-men's College, the special classes and lec- 
tures organized for working men, all offer a 
great variety of opportunities. To a notable 
degree Education, Religion, and Philanthropy 
unite in offering resources for the betterment 
of the poorer people. Social settlements are 
numerous. 

250 



FACTORS AND CUSTOMS 

Perhaps the most notable one of these is the 
Robert Browning Social Settlement at Wal- 
worth, of which Reverend F. Herbert Stead is 
the warden, and of which Robert Barrett Brown- 
ing, the son of the poet, was the president for 
the four years preceding his death in 1912. 
The Browning Settlement is "the one shrine 
where is kept continually burning the lamp of 
devotion to Browning's memory", said a lead- 
ing man of letters of this work. Walworth, now 
the very center of the County of London, has 
in its one hundred and seventeen thousand 
people the very densest swarm of the entire 
metropolis. In the days when the parents of 
the poet lived there, it was a rural settlement, 
and in the register of the parish church are 
the notices of the admittance of the poet's 
parents to its membership. In this York Street 
chapel the Browning family worshiped. In 1890 
Browning Hall, for the benefit of working men, 
was erected on this site. Fifteen years later, the 
Settlement was founded, with Reverend F. Her- 
bert Stead as its warden. This is a complex 
work, including such agencies as the Men's 
Brotherhood, the Women's Meeting, Fellowship 
of Followers, University Extension and other 
lectures, a Travel Club, a Boys' Brigade, Girls' 
Clubs. There is an admirable free library and 
a gymnasium with all athletic appointments. 

251 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

Robert Barrett Browning wrote to Mr. Stead 
saying: 

"I need scarcely assure you how gratified my 
father would have been by so much work being 
done, with so much enthusiasm and unflagging 
zeal; and I do not hesitate to say that he would 
most certainly have rejoiced in his heart, and 
felt honored, indeed, by his name being asso- 
ciated with it." 

Miss Isabel Faraday founded, in 1906 (the 
centenary of Mrs. Browning), the Browning 
Bethany Homes for the aged poor, at a cost of 
more than ten thousand pounds. Professor 
Hall Griffin, the poet's friend, and one of his 
several biographers, said that no centenary 
monument could so have appealed to the heart 
of Elizabeth Barrett Browning as this establish- 
ment. With all this splendid working endow- 
ment of resources, the Settlement is most for- 
tunate of all in its warden, Mr. Stead, who is a 
younger brother of the late William Stead. No 
man was ever more ideally calculated to lead 
and conduct so multiform a work for human 
betterment. 

There is an amusing side to the Browning 
Settlement. Mr. Stead gleefully related that 
on a recent occasion, passing through the street, 
one morning, he heard two unkempt laborers 
in keen controversy over some matter, and 

252 



FACTORS AND CUSTOMS 

finally one of them settled the question by 
exclaiming: "Robert Browning, he would niver 
have done that; he was a mon! tho', belike, he 
did write them po'try, he was a mon, Browning 
was! 

The English have always manifested a high 
sense of duty in the call of public needs, but the 
political conditions that must meet and deal 
with the industrial discontent are too compli- 
cated and too involved for discussion outside 
of a large and intimate knowledge. The so- 
journer in London hears much and perhaps un- 
derstands little. 

The Fabians were originally organized as an 
attempt to deal with the existing lack of govern- 
ment plans and schemes regarding organized 
labor, and in the autumn of 1914 Mr. Bernard 
Shaw will give a course of lectures discussing 
the industrial unrest. "Thoughts let us into 
realities," asserts Emerson, and London is the 
very hothouse of thought and insight and 
ceaseless discussion of the human problem. 



253 



IX 

THE LIVING INFLUENCE OF VICTORIAN 
LITERATURE 

"I walked on, musing with myself 
On life and art, and whether, after all, 
A larger metaphysics might not help 
Our physics, a completer poetry 
Adjust our daily life and vulgar wants. 
More fully than the special outside plans. 
Phalansteries, material institutes. 
The civil conscriptions and lay monasteries 
Preferred by modern thinkers; ..." 

Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 

Literature and life are in such close inter- 
relation that no consideration of the one can 
exclude or ignore the other. Very largely then 
they may be regarded as reciprocal cause and ef- 
fect ; and the general transmission of knowledge 
from one period to another is like the trans- 
mission of light in that most beautiful and sym- 
bolic of the sacred rites at Eleusis, where each 
mysta (or liberated person) has his torch ignited 
from the burning one that just preceded it in 
the procession. The poets are the divine torch- 
bearers of the ages; poet and prophet hold 
aloft the light to illumine the way. Out of the 
long and brilliant period of Victorian literature 

254 




Reproduced by permission of the National I'ortrait Gallery 

Lord Lytton ("Owen Meredith") 

From a painting by George Frederick Watts, National Portrait Gallery 



VICTORIAN LITERATURE 

what proportion of the burning torches had been 
kindled from the sacred fire that never dies? 
The apostolic line in literature is unbroken ; from 
one generation to another there is the laying on 
of hands. 

The Victorian Age was preeminently rich in 
profound and far-reaching intellectual achieve- 
ment. It made epoch-making discoveries in 
science; it offered an enormous ethical and 
philosophical contribution; the forerunners of 
the new humanity were the happy guides whose 
shining trails are never overtaken, yet whose 
*' melodious trace" is left upon the air; it was 
vitalized by the message of great poets; it was 
peopled by impressive creations — in prose, 
in romance, in poetic vision; the drama, under 
the genius of Sir Henry Irving and other ar- 
tists, attained larger scope as a revelation 
of scenic beauty and as a teacher of life; the 
Church and churchmen, from the important 
prelates and priests of the country, to the masses 
of laymen, entered on a diviner conception of 
the Christian life and of the mission of the 
Church to humanity; theological problems gave 
way to a great movement for temperance, a 
great effort for general education, for the re- 
demption and the betterment of human life in 
every direction; for an industrial and economic 
justice; for moral efficiency. Almost might 

255 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

the Victorian Age have seemed to take for its 
motto those wonderful words in the "Exhor- 
tation to Hermes": "Therefore I would have 
you armed both with a perfect philosophy and 
with the power of the divine life." The teachers 
that were sent to that age 

"With revelations fitted to its growth." 

comprise a wonderful galaxy in the entire his- 
tory of literature. On the threshold were 
Scott, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Keats, 
Shelley, and William Wilberforce, the great 
liberator and parliamentarian. Walter Savage 
Landor, their contemporary, lived so long, pro- 
ducing some of his greatest work almost at the 
time of his death in 1864, that he seems more 
identified with the succeeding generation than 
with his own; and Tennyson may be thought 
of as the contemporary of William Watson and 
Stephen Phillips as well as of the Brownings. 
Among those whose names first occur as men 
and women of especial influence which is per- 
petuated by the work they have left, and who 
are seen a little apart from others of their 
time who also held literary preeminence, are 
Carlyle, Macaulay, Newman, Maurice, Mar- 
tineau, Gladstone, Mill, the Brownings, Darwin, 
Tennyson, Thackeray, Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, 
Robertson, Charlotte Bronte, Kingsley, Ruskin, 

256 



VICTORIAN LITERATURE 

George Eliot, Herbert Spencer, Tyndall, Hug- 
gins, Liddon, Matthew Arnold, Alfred Russel 
Wallace, William Morris, William Angus Knight, 
John Morley, Swinburne, and Edward Dowden. 
The pre-Raphaelite movement that had been 
for some time in the air, due partly to Ford 
Madox Brown, crystallized about 1849, under 
the special leadership of Holman Hunt, John 
Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel, and William 
Michael Rossetti. It was a movement that owed 
much to the impulse set in motion by Ruskin's 
"Modern Painters", and to the deep religious 
appeal of the Oxford movement. A new earnest- 
ness seemed to pervade the air, and Ruskin 
increased its intensity by his enthusiasm for 
"vitality against morality, spirit against letter, 
truth against tradition." The revolt of this 
coterie was as much against theological dogma 
as against unreality in art; they turned to lit- 
erary expression as another means by which to 
prove the faith that was in them, and estab- 
lished a magazine called The Germ, although the 
name was soon changed to Art and Poetry. 
The first number appeared with the new year 
of 1850, containing a sonnet by Rossetti, 
and other contributions from Ford Madox 
Brown, Christina Rossetti, and an etching by 
Hunt. Among later contributors were Coventry 
Patmore, William Bell Scott, and Frederick 

257 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

Stephens. Rossetti's poem, *'TIie Blessed 
Damozel", first appeared in this magazine. The 
most important service of this literary enterprise 
was to call attention to the poetry of Brown- 
ing, which, from the time of the fame won by 
*' Paracelsus" and "Bells and Pomegranates", 
had been neglected. The "Christmas Eve and 
Easter Day" appeared about this time and was 
made the text of a review by William Michael 
Rossetti in an entirely new vein of criticism. 
It was the declaration that each artist has his 
own form of creation and that Robert Brown- 
ing must not be expected to tune his lyre by 
the keynote of Milton, Scott, or Wordsworth, 
by that of Keats, or of Shelley, but might give 
his message in his own way, the judgment on 
which must be based solely on the value of the 
message and the appropriateness of its form. 
The little periodical had, on the whole, a brief 
tenure, but it is closely allied with the rise and 
development of the work and influence of Rus- 
kin. The "Seven Lamps of Architecture" 
and the "Stones of Venice" had both been 
written previously to the appearance of The 
Germ; and the first volume of "Modern Paint- 
ers" was published in 1843; but it was this 
definite protest voiced against conventional 
cant and shallow pretense that led the public 
to enter on the tremendous recognition and 

258 



VICTORIAN LITERATURE 

following that Ruskin was destined to com- 
mand. Brahma was both the doubter and the 
doubt, and Ruskin emulated that illustrious 
worthy in being both the prophet and the proph- 
esied. He discussed nearly every theme re- 
lated to the advancement of art and life, for 
he always conceived of the two as in the closest 
interrelation; and his pictorial vividness of ex- 
pression, his power of condensing the spiritual 
possibilities of life into a paragraph, made him 
a factor in the general development only second 
to Newman and Matthew Arnold. From 1869 
until his death, in 1900, Ruskin was Slade Pro- 
fessor of Fine Arts at Oxford. A social Utopia 
prefigured itself before his vision. With that 
preeminently fine and lofty spirit and the lead- 
ing American interpreter of Dante, — Charles 
Eliot Norton, — Ruskin had a close and con- 
genial friendship that has left its recordi in the 
published letters which passed between them. 
With Morris and with Charles Mackay, the 
laureate of labor, he was in intimate sympathy 
in the aim to benefit the working men. 

"Build up heroic lives, and all 
Be like a sheathed sabre. 
Ready to flash forth at God's call, 
O chivalry of labor!" 

sang Mackay, and the invocation of Ruskin 
and of Morris expressed itself in forming classes 

259 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

for the instruction of these workers. Ruskin's 
lectures before the working men were com- 
panioned by those of Huxley and of Tyndall, 
and the impetus toward a higher development 
thus communicated, and in which other lec- 
turers and instructors joined, increased with 
accelerated ratio, and has been the forceful 
undercurrent that has found expression in labor 
legislation and demand for a better order of 
conditions. Nor is it an exaggeration to say 
that this impulse was the germ of all the de- 
mand of to-day for a complete industrial regen- 
eration. 

The pre-Raphaelite movement touched litera- 
ture as well as art, and in its tumultuous ac- 
claim of "the absolute, uncompromising truth " 
laid perhaps an undue stress on mere facts. 
It was the boast of the brotherhood that every 
pre-Raphaelite landscape was painted, even to 
the last touch, in the open air; that every figure, 
in genre f as well as in portrait work, was "a true 
portrait" of some living person. Such a theory 
was absurd and was exclusive of all imagina- 
tive power. 

To what degree the pre-Raphaelite move- 
ment influenced that renaissance of art in 
the mid-nineteenth century, acting on Alma- 
Tadema, Leighton, and others who were not 
of the brotherhood, is another question and 

260 



VICTORIAN LITERATURE 

one not without interest. Sir Alma-Tadema 
was one of the most fastidious of artists. Emi- 
nently gifted, he more than doubled the power 
of his gift by his intense absorption in his work. 
The Royal Academy made a complete exhibi- 
tion of his pictures soon after his death, for which 
galleries and individual owners yielded up their 
treasures, a collection of remarkable quality 
and classic beauty, in which the pre-Raphael- 
ite spirit was recognizable. Sir Alma-Tadema 
had little sympathy — many critics thought 
too little — with the various changing states 
of art, — the impressionist school, the cubist, 
the futurist; he painted what he saw, and he 
did not devote his life to the contemplation of 
those things that are invisible; yet he was too 
great an artist to be limited to the realm of 
facts. He painted scenes that had not sur- 
rounded the historic events they commemo- 
rated, but which might fitly have invested 
them; and by his marvellous technique painted 
them precisely as they should have transpired, 
with an accuracy that demands no aid from the 
spectator. Lord Leighton was inevitably more 
influenced by the Italian and by other conti- 
nental art, in Paris, Dresden, Madrid, and the 
various art centers in which his impressionable 
childhood and youth had been fairly steeped, 
than by any other trend; but quite aside from 

261 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

any source of influence, he had an intense in- 
dividuality that, with his rare genius, made 
him almost a master rather than a follower, or 
an assimilator, of any school. His refinement 
was a part of his character, and manifested itself 
in every personal characteristic as unfailingly 
as in his art. The luxury of the Venetian paint- 
ers clung to him, yet with this went his own 
simplicity. He was not wanting in devotion to 
the majesty of Michelangelo, nor the tran- 
scendent beauty of Raphael, nor the ardor 
that pervades Florentine art, while his own 
vision, his own power of original grouping, are 
distinctively individual. His love for Italy 
was a very component of his life. He was 
often to be met when in Rome lingering with 
rapt countenance on the Palatine, among the 
palaces of the Caesars; he loved to loiter at the 
top of the Scala di Spagna, to watch the opaline 
splendors of morning color over Monte Mario, 
and all the charm of Italy entered into his 
life to be transmuted into still other charm 
stamped with his own princely genius. His 
life was consecrated to beauty, to love, and 
generous nobleness to all who touched it. 
When the visitor now lingers in Leighton House 
he cannot fail to recall the magic of Lord Leigh- 
ton's influence on his own century. All the 
members of the pre-Raphaelite group have left 

262 




o 

.3 

'A 



o 
+J 

]^ 

-1 

"? 
3 



VICTORIAN LITERATURE 

work strongly individual, noble in purpose, emi- 
nent in beauty. 

Whistler, although an American; Edwin Ab- 
bey, and the brilliant John Singer Sargent (who, 
though born in Florence, is of American parent- 
age), are still to be numbered with the British 
group, as members of the Royal Academy 
and as affiliated by ties of residence and 
association. 

Of the groups of men representative of 
literature in the strict sense of belles-lettres: 
in historic, economic, and scientific writing; in 
works on religion or on art, almost every name 
cited has strong claim to personal interest from 
the view point of biography as well as that 
of individual production. Grote, whose monu- 
mental history of Greece remains a permanent 
authority, was forty years completing this work, 
and he was one of the most prominent social 
figures of his time. He refused a peerage, but 
he has the honor of a tomb in Westminster 
Abbey. John Stuart Mill, whose insight into 
economics has in many respects furnished a 
basis for radical thought, was himself radical 
(with conditions), and his work and life con- 
stitute a powerful factor in present develop- 
ment. The colossal wealth of England on the 
one hand, the direst and most despairing pov- 
erty on the other, combine to make all questions 

263 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

pertaining to social economics, to free trade, 
to tariff reform, and industrial production, 
problems that assume national significance if 
not national menace. The mathematical genius 
of an Archimedes might well be taxed for their 
adequate solution. 

All these questions and problems were sug- 
gested, or imaged, in the literature of the Vic- 
torian Age. Poet and prophet and novelist 
were all more or less haunted and beset by a 
loftier social ideal. It was the Zeitgeist. Car- 
lyle, and Mill, and Herbert Spencer; Charles 
Kingsley, following closely after the revolu- 
tionizing work of William Wilberforce; Dickens, 
portraying in vivid and picturesque fiction the 
typical conditions of a great mass of the popu- 
lation; Charles Mackay, singing his lyrics of 
hopefulness in such lines as these: 

"But never sit we down and say 

There 's nothing left but sorrow; 
We tread the Wilderness to-day; 
The Promised Land to-morrow!" 

Maurice and Robertson; Bishop Samuel Wil- 
berforce, Martineau, Dean Stanley, Canon 
Liddon, "who made St. Paul's a religious center 
of London", churchman or nonconformist as 
may be, were all inspired by the spirit to work 
for higher development. Thackeray held shams 
and bombastic pretense up to the ridicule of 

264 



VICTORIAN LITERATURE 

the day; Morris and Ruskin applied their power 
to the teaching of a more enHghtened Hving; 
Matthew Arnold brought to immediate rela- 
tions with human life his noble and uplifting 
ideals of that culture of mind and spirit that 
alone deserves the name. Huxley, with keen 
appreciation of the value of literature, would 
yet still further extend and enlarge the scope of 
life by drawing from the infinite storehouse of 
physical science. Elizabeth Barrett Browning 
sent forth her potent message for truth and for 
the uttermost fidelity to the ideal vision, — 
that the loftiest spirituality should be a part of 
the daily life. 

She tells us in Aurora Leigh: 

"... Natural things 
And spiritual, — who separates these two 

Paints futile pictures, writes unreal verse." 

"It was her part," said Doctor Edward Dow- 
den, "to show how the ideality of poetry does 
not lead the singer away from humanity, but 
rather bids him enter into the inmost chambers 
of love and desire." 

The influence of Tennyson on his own age 
which he enchanted by the beauty of his thought, 
his suggestions of mediaeval splendor, and the 
perfect music of his melodious verse, was per- 

265 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

haps the most general, all-prevaiHng, and un- 
questioned of any poet in the English tongue. 
It is an influence that, happily, has increased 
in breadth and fullness rather than faded with 
time. He taught always the love of art, the 
love of beauty, the reverence for law. So pro- 
longed a period of active poetic production is 
given to few poets. Born in 1809, he had fairly 
entered on his kingdom as a youth of twenty, 
and from the time of the publication of the 
slender volume, "Poems, Chiefly Lyrical", 
in 1830, until his death in the October of 
1892, he was constantly proving himself anew. 
His last lyric, written at the age of eighty- 
three, ranks with the best production of his 
life. 

Professor William Angus Knight, LL.D., now 
Emeritus Professor of Philosophy in the Uni- 
versity of St. Andrews, who, born in 1836, 
entered in the mid-century on his active ser- 
vice in philosophy and letters, visited Tennyson 
at his Farringford home two years before the 
poet's death, and records that his whole bear- 
ing "disclosed a latent strength and nobility, 
a reserve of power, combined with a most cour- 
teous grace of manner." It is the poet's word 
that, "planted deep enough in any man's 
breast", springs up in a thousandfold form of 
spiritual energy. When the Poet overhears 

266 



VICTORIAN LITERATURE 

the gods, as they "talk in the breath of the 
woods", he becomes 

" — the fated man of men 
Whom the Ages must obey." 

The spiritual influence of the poetry of 
Tennyson, persisting through more than fifty 
years of active production, is simply immeasur- 
able. Mr. Gladstone wrote of this influence; 
Professor Sidgwick felt that its most important 
effect, "apart from its rare poetic charm", lay 
in the "unparalleled combination of intensity 
of feeling with that comprehensiveness of view 
which presented the deepest needs and per- 
plexities of humanity." 

As an embodiment of high purpose, and also, 
too, as fairly a spiritual autobiography, is 
"Merlin and the Gleam." To Lord Tenny- 
son the "Gleam" signifies the higher poetic 
imagination. All through his life 

"The Gleam, flying onward," 

had beckoned him. It was the "Gleam" that 
led him, 

"To the city and palace 
Of Arthur the King; 
Touched at the golden 
Cross of the churches. 
Flashed at the tournament, 

267 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

" And last on the forehead 
Of Arthur the blameless 
Rested the Gleam. 

"Clouds and darkness 
Closed upon Camelot." 

And then: 

"The Gleam flying onward 
Wed to the melody 
Sang to the world." 

Thus was the poet lured onward to "the land's 
last limits", where, 

"Through the magic 
Of Him, the Mighty" 

the "Gleam" brought its loyal follower to the 
very border, — 

"And all but in Heaven 
Hovers the Gleam," 

The entire poetic life of Lord Tennyson is re- 
corded in these lines. 

The poet had an impassioned love of nature, 
and especially for the starry sky. "Since Dante 
no poet in any land has so loved the stars," 
said Theodore Watts-Dunton ; "for moonlight 
effects he had a passion equally strong." 

Between Queen Victoria and Lord Tennyson 
there was an almost lifelong friendship. Many 
letters that were personally written to him by 
her Majesty are included in that exquisite 

268 







< 



VICTORIAN LITERATURE 

biography by his son, the present Lord Tenny- 
son. On an August day in 1883 the poet visited 
the queen, who made a long record of their 
conversation in her private diary, opening with 
the words: 

" After luncheon saw the great Poet Tenny- 
son in dearest Albert's room for nearly an hour 
and most interesting it was. . . . He spoke of 
many friends, and what it would be if he did 
not feel and know that there was another world ; 
. . . and then he spoke with horror of the un- 
believers and philosophers who would make you 
believe there was no Immortality." 

The words of Queen Victoria cannot but 
suggest the touchstone that typifies all the 
greatness of that century and its literature; 
that it was an age of belief. There were in evi- 
dence the school of positivists and certain in- 
dividuals who were materialists, but in the gen- 
eral sense, all the notable individualities were 
men and women of deep spiritual conviction. 
An age of unbelief is barren; an age of faith 
is rich in its results. 

The Victorian Age was singularly rich in in- 
tellectual expression. There poured into it the 
wealth of poets, painters, novelists, historians, 
whose birth preceded the nineteenth century, 
but who came to their literary maturity during 
its first fifty years, shedding almost unparal- 

269 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

leled luster on the early decades of the reign 
of the young queen. 

It was also the age of notable history and 
of great criticism: Hallam, Freeman, Froude, 
Grote, Macaulay, Lecky, Green; Milman, the 
Dean of St. Paul's, whose monumental "History 
of Christianity under the Empire" and "Latin 
Christianity" constituted, as Dean Stanley 
said, "a complete epic and philosophy of 
mediaeval Christianity"; Mandell Creighton, 
whose "History of the Papacy from the Great 
Schism to the Sack of Rome " is held as the 
final authoritative presentation of that move- 
ment; Buckle, of whose work George Eliot re- 
marked that while full of suggestive material, 
it had "some strangely unphilosophic opin- 
ions"; these and others contributed to the in- 
tellectual interest of the world as well as to 
that of Great Britain. 

In this period Sir David Brewster invented 
the kaleidoscope and discovered the polariza- 
tion of light. When astronomy had apparently 
found the limit beyond which further researches 
in the stellar universe could not be prosecuted 
because (as then believed) the limit of size in 
the telescope had been reached, the spectroscope 
was invented, and the power of the telescope 
multiplied many times. The application of the 
spectroscope by Sir William Huggins, in 1864, 

270 



VICTORIAN LITERATURE - 

inaugurated an epoch in astro-physics (founded 
by Sir William) and has since been further de- 
veloped, both by stellar photography and by 
the solution of the problem of three bodies. 
This signal advance has led to the great and the 
constantly increasing knowledge of the nebulae 
and of their processes of development into cos- 
mic systems. 

The Tractarian Movement, which produced 
a crisis in the history of the Church in England, 
had its rise in a sermon on National Apostasy, 
preached by Keble (the author of the " Christian 
Year"), who died in 1855. 

The nineteenth century was an age of con- 
structive criticism. Carlyle had little sympathy 
with the various schemes for reconstructive 
work, but his impassioned invocation of the 
essential against the non-essentials of life; his 
violent denunciation of shams and his insistence 
on the genuine; his rhetorical battering against 
existing follies and affectations, had their work 
to do. Richard Holt Hutton, whose own fine 
criticism of life was an important force in the 
last quarter of the nineteenth century, points 
out that Carlyle "felt little interest in scientific 
discoveries; concerned himself not at all about 
art; scorned the economical teaching of his day; 
and rejected the modern religious instructors." 
Yet who, in those impressionable years of early 

271 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

youth, has not fervently copied into his note- 
books and fairly engraved upon his mind the 
choral tumult of Carlyle's impassioned coun- 
sels? 

" The hour of spirit enfranchisement is when 
your ideal world becomes revealed to you." 

" O thou that pinest in the imprisonment of 
the Actual, and criest bitterly to the gods for a 
kingdom to rule and create, know this of a truth, 
— the thing thou seekest is already with thee; 
here or nowhere, could'st thou only see." 

" There is in man a higher than love of Hap- 
piness, — he can do without Happiness and in- 
stead thereof find Blessedness." 

For of such fabric is that "soul-stuff", of which 
Browning tells us, woven; by such thoughts are 
latent dreams and ideals startled into forces 
and activities. Carlyle saw life as "enshrined 
in the immensities" and as Emerson shrewdly 
observed, he was one to "clap wings" to every- 
thing. Yet with all his terrifying verbosities, 
and the Carlylese in which Mr. Gosse asserts 
that he wrote rather than in English, there are 
in him traces of that same power that Marcus 
Aurelius displayed. It is conceded that Car- 
lyle's best literary expression was in history, 
and in that great and searching achievement 
he can hardly be too highly appreciated. So 
great a critic as Professor Dowden, indeed, re- 

272 




Reproduced by permission of the National Portrait Gallery 



Sir William Huggins 

From a portrait by John Collier, presented by Lady Huggins to the National Portrait Gallery 



VICTORIAN LITERATURE 

gards Carlyle as the finest scientific historian 
of his age. 

Macaulay had an inconceivable charm of 
style; he had brilliancy of texture; but these 
qualities, together with a wonderful capacity 
for literary analysis and for penetrating into 
the secrets of the inner mental mechanism, were 
more highly revealed in many of his essays, 
especially the remarkable one on Milton. It is 
Macaulay, too, who first introduced into Eng- 
lish literature the Etude, in which he fairly 
rivals the French, who delight in that form. 

All in all, what a notable group of the immor- 
tals the writers, the scientific men, and the 
preachers of the mid-Victorian era form! Rus- 
kin, Morris, Matthew Arnold, Rossetti, with 
all the glamour and romance of his Italian in- 
heritance investing him; Jowett, the learned; 
Pater, with his incomparably exquisite style; 
Mallock, brilliant, inventive, unique; Canon 
Liddon, a spiritual genius; Cardinal Manning, 
one of the most noble of men and great-hearted 
to a degree that only the recording angel 
can fully know; Principal Caird, Sir William 
Crookes, Kingsley, with that "extraordinary 
generous seeking", to use a favorite phrase of 
Margaret Fuller's; Henry Sidgwick; Frederic 
W. H. Myers; William Kingdom Clifford (whose 
charming wife has also made a name for her- 

273 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

self in fiction); Christina Rossetti, a poet of 
extreme distinction; Jean Ingelow, whose poem, 
*'A Dead Year", together with her "Divided", 
assure her hterary immortahty, and whose large 
contribution of poetry and fiction held a definite 
place in their time; Bryan Waller Procter, and 
that singer of exquisite tenderness and beauty 
and holiness of feeling, his daughter, Adelaide 
Anne Procter; Mrs. Hemans, who, although 
she passed on into that world of light and love 
which her nature craved, in the very dawn of 
the accession of England's beloved queen, has 
left a body of poetry that can never be negligi- 
ble; Leigh Hunt; Lord Houghton, earlier known 
as Monckton Milnes, whose charming hospi- 
talities were a special feature of the London 
literary life of his day and whose own work 
held recognized place; Edwin Arnold (later Sir 
Edwin) who brought that marvellous Oriental 
philosophy into English verse, making himself, 
indeed, the poet of the Buddhist faith, its very 
laureate, for his *' Light of Asia" interpreted 
its spiritual truth with marvellous fidelity and 
felicity and made that rich field peculiarly his 
own, — what an unrivalled galaxy in literature 
was that of this period ! 

Sir Sidney Lee has made a monumental con- 
tribution in his encyclopaedic "National Dic- 
tionary of Biography," a work that may well 

274 



VICTORIAN LITERATURE 

rank with the Seven Labors of Hercules, and 
which, with all due respect to that mythical 
being, must be said to be far more important 
in applied results than were all the Seven of 
the mighty god. Lord Kelvin's scientific dis- 
coveries were momentous; Disraeli reads his 
title clear to a place in English annals far more 
by his position as Premier and the friendship 
bestowed upon him by the queen, than by the 
long list of fiction that he produced. As a 
diplomat he is forever distinguished by an 
inimitable tact, as when, on being asked how 
he invariably satisfied the queen, he replied: 
"I never contradict: but I sometimes forget." 
Disraeli was not without claim to genuine 
nobility, also, and the greatness of his state- 
ment, "Peace with honor", will not soon be 
forgotten. William Sharp, gifted and winning, 
who "died too soon", the author of much ad- 
mirable work; whose "secondary personality" 
(as the psychologists would say) , the mysterious 
"Fiona Macleod", fashioned her tales out of 
"the beauty of the world, the pathos of life, 
the spiritual glamour, the inheritance of the 
Gael", survives as a figure in literature. Robert 
Louis Stevenson, whose wealth of friendship 
was to him, we may well believe, far dearer 
than his wealth of fame, was famous for a 
charming and sympathetic personality as well 

275 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

as for work that has claim to remembrance. 
The biennial stars whose Parnassian name was 
known as Michael Field, were tracked relent- 
lessly to their literary lair, and stood revealed as 
two gifted women. Miss Bradley and Miss Edith 
Cooper. In a letter to Mrs. Louise Chandler 
Moulton, Miss Cooper once playfully said of 
their "Stephanie", then just published: "We 
have the audacity to think it is nearly as well 
woven as one of the William Morris carpets." 

Morris, in some regions of the universe, is 
better known by his artistry than by his art. 
His establishment of a tea-shop in Marylebone, 
where the poor could buy the genuine article 
at a reasonable price, has often, in the chroni- 
cles of his achievements, taken precedence of 
his poetry, which was of a high order. 

Helen Zimmern, although she has made her 
lifelong home in the Florence she adores and 
adorns, is of the English group; Edmund Gosse, 
poet, critic, editor, commentator of the utmost 
refinement and of vigorous penetration, whose 
four colossal volumes on "English Literature" 
were written in collaboration with the late 
Richard Garnett, the learned Keeper of the 
British Museum, has contributed a work of the 
utmost importance; Andrew Lang, Austin Dob- 
son, — each is a poet whose work deserves far 
more adequate reference than is possible here. 

27G 



VICTORIAN LITERATURE 

John Morley's great biography of Gladstone is 
one of the rare masterpieces in all English- 
speaking literature, and his critical essays 
have contributed signal illumination to letters. 
These men and women form a remarkable 
group. 

Nor may Swinburne's friend and home- 
companion, Theodore Watts-Dunton, be un- 
mentioned, for not a little of the work among the 
best is due to him. Professor Mahaffy has made 
both ancient and modern Greece live for his 
readers; Professor Edward Dowden might al- 
most share with the Brownings, whom he has 
so finely interpreted, the quality of being a 
"subtlest asserter of the soul", not "in song", 
as said of Browning, but in critical interpreta- 
tion. Professor William Angus Knight has 
enriched literature, and of him (under date of 
May 18, 1878) Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 
then visiting in London, records: "I went to a 
reception at Mr. Martineau's last night (chiefly 
his students and parishioners) . . . and the 
person I liked best was a very pleasing young 
professor, of St. Andrews, Scotland, — Mr. 
Knight, of St. Andrews, — who, to my surprise, 
had my Epictetus and knew all about it." 
Had Colonel Higginson's acquaintance with 
Professor Knight progressed further, he would 
have ceased to be surprised at the "young 

277 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

professor's" familiarity with his own Epictetus, 
or anything else. Whether Doctor Knight con- 
sciously intended to illustrate in himself the 
"taking of all knowledge" for his province in 
life is not on record; but it is quite clear from 
the evidence of the forty-seven volumes of his 
work, inclusive of original matter (of the finest 
order), of translations, and of editorship, to 
say nothing of his lifelong contributions to the 
British Quarterly, the Scottish Review, the Fort- 
nightly, Nineteenth Century, and many other of 
the greatest periodicals, that his knowledge of 
many literatures, in many languages, leaves 
little to be desired. Philosophy, the classics, 
theology, pure literature in the sense of belles- 
lettres, have all engaged his attention; and 
although he was born in 1836 and was already 
in active life twenty years later, he is still (at 
the age of seventy-eight in the retirement of 
his Greta Lodge, Keswick, home) an ardent 
observer and a contributor of the highest 
standing. Professor Knight gives a volume 
of charming reminiscences of a group of his 
friends and correspondents, including Carlyle, 
Browning, Tennyson, Martineau, Dean Stan- 
ley, Matthew Arnold, Gladstone, and others. 
The biographer of Wordsworth, and the editor 
of the best and the accredited editions of his 
works, — it is Professor Knight who is the finest 

278 



VICTORIAN LITERATURE 

interpreter of this author's work, as is Professor 
Dowden of the poetry of Robert Browning. 

The daughters of Kingsley and of Thackeray, 
Mrs. Harrison known as "Lucas Malet" and 
Lady Ritchie (Anne Thackeray), have distin- 
guished themselves in hterature. And although 
one of the latter-day writers who only swam 
into ken at the very close of the Victorian Age, 
Jane Barlow, with her inimitable stories of 
Irish peasant life and with poems that have 
commanded attention, must be named. The 
daughter of a distinguished professor in the 
University of Dublin, a musician of unusual 
gifts, Miss Barlow could hardly have failed to 
impress herself upon modern readers. Kath- 
erine Tynan, now Mrs. Hinkson, whose lovely 
lyrics charm the very heart out of one, and 
whose Irish ballads are only to be read between 
tears and laughter, has turned lately to fiction 
as a new medium of expression. 

In the eighties a writer of curious and fas- 
cinating trend, Rider Haggard, cast his spell 
over the novel-reading world; Marie Corelli 
entered on her chosen field of occult romance, 
which she has made so wide in popular interest; 
and Rudyard Kipling flashed like a meteor on 
the literary horizon and continued to shine like 
a fixed star. Winning a phenomenal fame in 
his earliest youth, he is already, though still 

279 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

hardly beyond his first youthful maturity, one 
of the poets and romancers whose place in 
English letters is fixed as one that not even the 
most superficial commentator could fail to 
recognize as important. The nephew of Lady 
Burne-Jones, he was born in Bombay, as is well 
known, and to the picturesque environment of 
his boyhood may be traced undeniable influences 
on his genius. Mrs. Humphry Ward, who has 
made a great name in fiction, and who, as the 
niece of Matthew Arnold and the granddaughter 
of the noble Master of Rugby, shares in the 
prestige of the Arnold family, has won her own 
prestige, too, in the line of notable novels she 
has written since she first impressed the literary 
world so deeply by her "Robert Elsmere", in 
the latter years of the eighties. Mrs. Ward's 
social sway in the London of to-day is as 
supreme as it is beneficent, and her beautiful 
home is a center of a cultivated and charming 
circle. 

Mrs. Somerville, who was the friend and cor- 
respondent of Sir John Herschel, of Faraday, 
and other of her scientific contemporaries; 
whose marble bust adorns the Royal Institution 
in Albemarle Street, and on whom was bestowed 
the Victoria medal for her notable work in 
astronomy, lived until 1872, when she passed 
away in Naples, where her body is entombed in 

280 



VICTORIAN LITERATURE 

the English Campo Santo. Her "Mechanism 
of the Heavens" was published before the ac- 
cession of Queen Victoria to the throne; while 
her last work, dealing with molecular and micro- 
scopic science, appeared only three years before 
her death. Her long life of ninety-two years was 
one of the utmost value in its contribution to 
scientific progress. Mrs. Somerville was a life- 
long friend of John Murray, who first published 
her "Mechanism of the Heavens" at his own 
risk; at the brilliant dinner-parties at his home 
in Albemarle Street, where the guests were 
largely the most noted poets and literary work- 
ers of the day, she was a well-known figure. 
She was also a distinguished person in Florence 
in the days of Landor ^ and the Brownings. 

One of England's younger poets of much dis- 
tinction, who, despite the encumbrance of em- 
bassies, has fairly set all Greece to lyric music, 
is Sir Rennell Rodd, now the British Ambassa- 
dor to Italy. William Ernest Henley, who will 
always be associated with his impressive lines: 

"I am the master of my fate; 
I am the Captam of my soul," 

has left a body of poetry, not great in extent, 
but fine in quality. Francis Thompson, whose 
poetic life was brief, and was largely due to the in- 

1 " The Florence of Landor." Boston: Little, Brown and Company. 

281 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

finite kindness and generous recognition of Wil- 
fred and Alice Meynell, left an enduring impress. 
"Poet of high thinking, *of celestial vision'," 
Mr. Meynell says of Thompson; "and of imagin- 
ings that found literary images of answering 
splendor." Mr. Meynell gives the interesting 
information that the poem "In No Strange 
Land " was found among his papers after his 
death; . . . "here a defective rhyme . . . but 
no altered mind would he have brought to 
the purport of it . . . for in these triumphing 
stanzas, we hold in retrospect, as did he, those 
days and nights of human dereliction he spent 
beside London's River and in the shadow — 
but all radiance to him — of Charing Cross." 
The delicate, spiritual touch of Alice Meynell 
has imparted a new charm to the lyric and 
sonnet. Arthur Hugh Clough, whose early 
death occurred in Florence in 1861, and whose 
tomb is near that of Mrs. Browning in the long- 
since-closed Campo Santo, received from Lowell 
the high praise of being "the greatest since 
Lucretius in verse of the more intellectual 
tendency." Francis William Bourdillon is for- 
ever to be remembered by eight lines of perfect 
verse : 

"The night has a thousand stars. 
And the day but one; 
Yet the hght of the whole day dies 
With the dying sun. 



VICTORIAN LITERATURE 

"The mind has a thousand eyes, 
And the heart but one; 
Yet the Hght of a whole life dies 
When love is done!" 

Not that Mr. Bourdillon has not written much 
besides that has its claims, but these stanzas, 
like that perfect lyric, the "Rose Aylmer" 
of Landor, have engraved themselves in poetic 
immortality. 

A writer of fiction that won no inconsider- 
able popularity in its day was Dinah Mulock 
Craik, whose maiden name is also linked with 
a volume of lyrics containing some quite worth 
persistent remembrance. Among these is the 
well-known "Philip, my King," written to the 
blind poet, Philip Bourke Marston, himself a 
poet of great tenderness and mournful beauty. 
Another short poem under her early signature 
of Dinah Maria Mulock is the one beginning: 

"Two hands upon the breast 
And labor's done;" 

Among the minor poets of the Victorian 
period, Adelaide Procter is distinctive for spirit- 
ual depth and for a rare finish and beauty of 
expression. One of her lyrics, "A Woman's 
Question ", is often erroneously ascribed to Mrs. 
Browning, but if there could be any excuse for 
such error (which of course there is not! the 
gods have a just malediction for one who can 

283 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

mistake his poets), it would be in that Miss 
Procter almost reaches, in this poem, something 
of that depth and beauty of feeling that is in- 
separable from Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 

How Emerson's keen lines on "The Test'* 
recur, on any retrospective glance over a cen- 
tury's literature! How much, indeed, survives? 

"I hung my verses in the wind. 
Time and tide their faults may find." 

The verses were "winnowed through and 
through", and after all the tests, — the smelting 
of those that "the siroc could not melt"; the 
snow that "sunshine could not bleach", — after 
all the severest tests, the poet asks: 

"Have you eyes to find the five 
Which five hundred did survive?" 

Time and tide sift out the enduring from the 
inconsequential and affix their own hall-marks 
of value. 

John Stuart Mill was a conspicuous and com- 
manding figure of the Victorian Age. "I con- 
fess," he said, "I am not charmed with the 
ideal of life held out by those who think that 
the normal state of human beings is that of 
struggling to get on"; but he saw that was "an 
incident of growth", not a feature of decline; 
that it was one phase of the striving after social 
perfection. 

284 



VICTORIAN LITERATURE 

Of all this period, the two most potent per- 
sonal influences were apparently those of Car- 
dinal Newman and of Matthew Arnold. Who 
can ever lose from memory those entrancing 
words spoken of Newman by Arnold, in his 
lecture on Emerson given in Boston, which he 
opened with the words flowing as in musical 
cadence : 

*' Forty years ago, when I was an undergrad- 
uate at Oxford, voices were in the air that 
haunt my memory still. Happy the man who, 
in that susceptible season of youth, hears 
such voices ! They are a possession to him for- 
ever. 

"The name of Cardinal Newman is a great 
name to the imagination still; his genius and 
his style are things of power. But he is over 
eighty years old; he is in the Oratory at Bir- 
mingham; . . . forty years ago he was in the 
very prime of life; he was close at hand to us 
at Oxford; he was preaching in St. Mary's 
pulpit every Sunday. . . . Who could resist 
the charm of that spiritual apparition, gliding 
in the dim afternoon light through the aisles of 
St. Mary's, rising into the pulpit, and then, in 
the most entrancing of voices, breaking the 
silence with words which were a religious music, 
— subtle, sweet, mournful.'^" 

And who can ever read unmoved that most 
penetrating and powerful farewell of the great 

285 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

Cardinal, sent to the Church of England, in 
which he said: 

*'0 kind and affectionate hearts, O loving 
friends, should you know any one whose lot it 
has been, by writing or by spoken word, in some 
degree to help you ; ... if he has ever told you 
what you know about yourselves or what you 
did not know, has read to you your wants or 
feelings and comforted you by the very reading; 
has made you feel that there was a higher life 
than this daily one and a brighter world than 
that you see; if what he has said or done has 
ever made you take an interest in him and feel 
well inclined toward him, remember such a one 
in time to come, though you hear him not, and 
pray for him that in all things he may know 
God's will, and at all times he may be ready to 
fulfill it." 

While Arnold pronounced Newman's solu- 
tion of the problem of life to be "impossible," 
he regarded him with the veneration and love 
due to "the last enchantments of the Middle 
Age." Arnold's vision was almost unrivalled; 
his power of selection and criticism as fastidious 
as it was effective and his criticism of life or 
letters had intense vitality. To Matthew Arnold 
life was one incessant striving after that noble 
serenity and beauty to which his own nature was 
so responsive. His poetry is of a quality that 
will always hold a secure place in English letters, 

286 



VICTORIAN LITERATURE 

and it was estimated very highly both by Lord 
Tennyson (between whom and Mr. Arnold a firm 
friendship existed) and by Swinburne, who was 
one of the first to call attention to the poetic 
genius of Arnold. Perhaps no clue to Mr. 
Arnold's inner life is more unerring than these 
lines from one of his personal letters: 

"... But whether one lives or not, to be 
true and less personal in one's desires and work- 
ings, is the great matter; and this, too, I feel, 
I am glad to say, more deeply than I did; but 
for progress in the direction of the 'seeketh 
not her own,' there is always room." 

Matthew Arnold's conception of criticism 
was singularly lofty; the calling attention to, — 
not the worst, but the Best that has been 
thought and said in the world. How the uni- 
versal adoption of this standard would regener- 
ate all human life! 

Mr. Clement Shorter, whose service to latter- 
day literature is far from inconsiderable, and 
whose valuable work in regard to Charlotte 
Bronte and her sisters is in vivid memory, 
regards the period of Victorian romance, chrono- 
logically considered, as opening with Thackeray 
and closing with Mrs. Oliphant. Mr. Shorter's 
recent work is fairly an unveiling of that im- 
passioned genius, Charlotte Bronte, whose 
novels have an extraordinary afterglow. 

287 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

Dickens, whom one English critic pronounces 
"realistic, but not real"; George Eliot; Bulwer, 
later the first Lord Lytton, making his romance 
the vehicle of new insights into strange aspects 
of the human problem, gained from his occult 
studies; Charles Reade, seeking to make his 
fiction in part, at least, the exposition of 
social wrongs, as in "Griffith Gaunt"; An- 
thony Trollope, ceaselessly active in produc- 
tion; Wilkie Collins, weaving his fascinating 
spells by a method whose secret died with him; 
George Meredith, brilliant, epigrammatic, pow- 
erful; Thomas Hardy (now Sir Thomas) with 
his intense and original strength, a novelist al- 
ways to be reckoned with; Mrs. Oliphant, whose 
incredibly prolific power is almost matched 
by the fine quality of her voluminous and 
varied work; Francillon, who was no stranger 
to the secrets of allurement; Laurence Oliphant, 
a fascinating figure in both life and literature, 
offering in those days the brilliant satire of his 
"Altiora Peto" and "Irene MacGillicuddy " ; 
George Macdonald, of beautiful thought; Bar- 
rie; Joseph Henry Shorthouse, the author of 
the much-loved "John Inglesant"; Sir Walter 
Besant, philanthropist and social reformer as 
well as novelist; William Black, who enchanted 
the hours; and Richard Doddridge Blackmore, 
whose "Lorna Doone" is one of those books 

288 



VICTORIAN LITERATURE 

that become favorites with the public, are others 
whose names will echo down the ages. 

The poetic work of the laureate who has re- 
cently passed, Alfred Austin, cannot be held to 
be quite assured among the "five lines" of 
Emerson's "Test"; and the present laureate. 
Doctor Robert Bridges, belongs rather to the 
present than to the past century by virtue of his 
official position. Mr. Alfred Noyes, who has 
gained a wide public, is obviously of the twen- 
tieth century, and the same chronological limit 
seems to surround May Sinclair, a brilliant 
and powerful novelist with a genius for personal 
analysis; so comprehensive, indeed, that one 
is tempted to ask if the chronological is not 
almost the only limit one would assign to Miss 
Sinclair .^^ The power of Sir Conan Doyle to 
fascinate two nations is well known ; and Arnold 
Bennett has won his multitude of admirers on 
both sides the Atlantic as well. 

Richard Bagot, whose Roman romance is 
remarkable for its fidelity to existing conditions 
and local color; Robert Hichens, whose work has 
the splendor and charm of the Mediterranean 
lands; Mrs. John Lane, who, while an American 
by birth, a native of Boston, is of distinguished 
German parentage, has become identified with 
England by marriage and affiliations, and whose 
brilliant work, praised by Cabinet Ministers, 

289 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

acclaimed by the critics, and read with avidity 
on both sides the ocean, is of a quaHty to justify 
this success; and Sir Frederic Wedmore, Eden 
Phillpotts, W. J. Locke, John Galsworthy, Jef- 
fery Farnol, and others, belong so essentially 
to the twentieth century, that it is hardly ex- 
cusable to allow even ardent appreciation to 
discuss them in connection with those more dis- 
tinctively of the Victorian era. 

No such chronological barrier debars refer- 
ence to one of the most prominent figures of 
the Victorian Age, Edward Robert Bulwer, 
Earl Lytton, who is perhaps better known to 
all lovers of poetry as "Owen Meredith.'* 
Poet, diplomat, scholar, man of letters; Vice- 
roy of India in 1876; Ambassador to France in 
1889, — Lord Lytton has adorned many impor- 
tant roles in life. Not ranking with the greatest 
poets, Lord Lytton has yet done a vast amount 
of graceful and interesting work, and his 
*'Lucile", a novel in rhyme, has a never-failing 
allurement. 

That a poet of the splendid genius and schol- 
arly equipment of Algernon Charles Swinburne, 
the most musical lyrist that England has known, 
a poet unsurpassed in glowing imagery and 
poetic eloquence, should not have received more 
adequate recognition during his life, is one of the 
insoluble mysteries. In imaginative range he 

290 




Reproduced by permission of the National Portrait Gallery 

Algernon Charles Swinburne 

From a portrait by George Frederick Watts. National Portrait Gallery 



VICTORIAN LITERATURE 

is unsurpassed, if not unrivalled; in his fairly 
miraculous gift of musical cadence he stands 
alone. No poet of all English literature had so 
wise a knowledge, so accurate a familiarity, 
with foreign languages and literatures as had 
Swinburne. Beyond this, what could be 
said? 

Of Browning, "subtlest asserter of the soul 
in song", who enriched the Victorian Age with 
the largest body of poetry of any single poet, 
and who imparted to the age — shall one say 
to all ages? — a spiritual vigor that is the most 
effective agent to counteract la maladie du 
siecle, many biographies have been written; 
Browning Societies in both England and the 
United States have been formed and for nearly 
forty years devoted to the study of his work; 
he is quoted by preachers in the pulpit, and by 
the ablest speakers on the platform. 

The entire message of Robert Browning's 
poetry is the importance and dignity of life 
used as a school for the immortal self. The poet 
sees man with faculties not yet unfolded, with 
capacities that exceed his power to grasp, and 
for which the fulfillment is beyond. He taught 
spiritual evolution. He taught the closest and 
most direct relation of the soul with God. 
Browning is the great interpreter of the su- 
preme meaning of life. 

291 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

In London society Browning was a greatly 
sought guest. The contrast between his love of 
society and Lord Tennyson's avoidance of it has 
been frequently pointed out. It has also been 
said that for forty years Tennyson was the only 
rival of Browning, but the beautiful and ardent 
friendship between the two greatest poets of the 
Victorian Age was such that the term rivalry 
seems hardly appropriate. Each sincerely en- 
joyed the work and the fame of the other. They 
were both too lofty in mind, too noble in spirit, 
to permit anything that could commonly be 
termed rivalry.. Another favorite dinner-table 
guest during those mid-century years was 
Laurence Oliphant, who would be the wit, the 
celebrity, and the life of a dinner in Mayfair 
one night, and the next be off to the Arabs on 
top of Mount Carmel, or to Haifa, or on a 
self-imposed mission to the Jews in Russia. 
His orbit was one that would have defied even 
Mr. H. G. Wells to predict. The Victorian Age 
was a social age in the sense of conversational 
intercourse, rather than one given over so 
largely to gregarious amusements as is the Lon- 
don of to-day. It was preeminently an age of 
reading. Motor-cars had not dawned on the 
horizon, nor many other diversions that en- 
chant the present. Nor had the tradition gained 
ground that the book of intellectual vigor was 



VICTORIAN LITERATURE 

one properly remanded to the shelves rather 
than as a tax on the thought and time of the 
individual. The great authors were a living force 
in the daily life. Professor Ticknor records 
much of the dinner-table talk in noted houses, 
during his visit to London in 1851, and the new 
books of the hour, as well as the great litera- 
ture of the past, were among the topics most 
considered. 

One of the most widely discussed books in 
the latter years of the seventies was Mr. Mal- 
lock's " New Republic." It was an unique blend- 
ing of romance and critical essay, rendered 
dramatic by the fact that the characters were 
quite recognizable. Matthew Arnold was un- 
mistakably portrayed; Huxley was discerned 
under the euphonious designation of "Mr. 
Storks"; the learned Professor Jowett figured 
as "Mr. Jenkinson"; Walter Pater as "Mr. 
Rose", Carlyle as "Mr. Herbert", Ruskin as 
"Mr. Saunders", Mrs. Mark Pattison (later 
Lady Dilke) as "Lady Grace"; Miss Froude, 
the brilliant and notable daughter of the his- 
torian, was included under the name of "Miss 
Morton", and other well-known people were 
transplanted into this original literary scheme. 
The conversations (and the work consists en- 
tirely of conversation) are inimitable in their 
brilliancy, their humor, the delicious satire 

293 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

involved, and not infrequently, too, offer serious 
and valuable comment. 

Robert Edward Francillon, one of the mid- 
Victorian novelists, brought out, in the spring 
of 1914, his own reminiscences of that period. 
He was an especial friend of Mrs. Louise 
Chandler Moulton, who was herself half a 
Londoner by virtue of friends and sympathies, 
and who, from 1876 until shortly before her 
death in 1908, passed every season in London. 
Alluding to Mrs. Moulton's weekly receptions 
and her power to draw about her a charming 
and notable circle, Mr. Francillon says: "There 
was literally no notable artist or author whom 
one would be surprised to meet there." 

Among these many interesting personalities 
who were not infrequently to be met on these 
occasions were the two youngest of the great 
poets of the Victorian era, whose best achieve- 
ments may be still before them in the twentieth- 
century years, William Watson and Stephen 
Phillips. Mr. Watson is a lyrist of such beauty 
that it is not strange that such a poet-discerner 
as Doctor Corson should have prophesied his 
fame when the young poet was but nineteen 
years of age, and the two were rambling together 
about Oxford. To those who have read Mr. 
Watson's "Shelley's Centenary", "In Laleham 
Churchyard", and his noble elegiac on Lord 

294 



VICTORIAN LITERATURE 

Tennyson, — "Lachrymse Musarum"; or felt 
the music and magic of his lyric beginning, — 

" Thy voice from inmost dreamland calls," 

the recognition of his imaginative energy is at 
once present. He has a mysterious power, all 
rose, and flame, and unanalyzable beauty. 

Stephen Phillips has a penetrating and lumi- 
nous spiritual insight, almost unrivalled in dra- 
matic intensity, that endows him with noble 
rank in the Parnassian group. Such lines as, — 

"I tell you we are fooled by the eye and ear; 
These organs muffle us from the real world 

That lies about us," 

• 

suggest this power of inner vision. Mr. Phillips 
has produced tragedies, especially his "Paolo 
and Francesca", that hold permanent place 
in the literature of Poetry in their passion- 
ate intensity of characterization and singular 
vividness of dramatic narrative. To a re- 
markable degree he has the epigrammatic gift. 
Lines and passages present the condensed con- 
clusions of scientific research, of a system of 
philosophy. After Tennyson he is England's 
supreme poet in his inclusiveness of scientific 
truth. Mr. Phillips is hardly a lyrist, — he 
has not the musical gift; yet he is not wanting 
in lines of the utmost claim to beauty and ten- 
derness. There are passages in his "Marpessa" 

295 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

that rival Shelley in an enthralling beauty that 
is suggestive of color and perfume and joy; of 
all the magic and mystery of nature. 

" The floating smell of flowers invisible 

When we are conscious of the sacred dawn 
Amid the darkness that we feel is green," 

is such a passage. In his "Marpessa" he finds 
his motif in the Greek legend, when Zeus gave 
to the maiden her choice between life with the 
god Apollo, translated to some enchanted 
region remote from the common experiences of 
humanity, or with Idas, a mortal, with whom 
she would share the common human lot of love 
and sorrow. Would she live as goddess, or 
woman .^^ Perhaps no English poet save Swin- 
burne is so purely Greek in feeling as is Mr. 
Phillips. The reality of the unseen is ever pres- 
ent with him. Who may venture the poetic 
horoscope of his rare gifts and infinite promise? 
As in Elizabeth Barrett Browning England 
produced one supreme woman poet, she has 
also produced one woman novelist who holds in 
the realm of prose romance the same imperish- 
able place. The author whom the world knows 
as George Eliot is sufficiently designated by 
this characterization. There could be no mis- 
taking of identity. The student of the great 
novels of George Eliot, for their continued read- 

296 



VICTORIAN LITERATURE 

ing is almost as much study as it is recrea- 
tion, may be puzzled in the effort to surprise 
the secret of their power. Certainly Charlotte 
Bronte surpassed her in thrilling climax of in- 
tensity. The reader is not so overwrought in 
following the tragedy of Grandcourt's sudden 
death by drowning in the Mediterranean as he 
is in his breathless pursuit of the cause of the 
interruption of the marriage ceremony between 
Jane Eyre and Rochester. Nor can her depic- 
tion of character, vivid and vital as it is, hardly 
be said to exceed that of Mrs. Oliphant in her 
''Chronicles of Carlingford", in which theTozers 
almost rival the Poysers; and in which the min- 
ister's mother is quite as much a living figure 
before the eye as is the mother of Gwendolen. 
According to George Eliot supreme rank in the 
literature of English fiction, is not, after all, 
to accord her this distinction in every phase 
and detail of artistic creation. It is when her 
five novels, exclusive of the "Clerical" scenes, 
are taken in their completeness that the critical 
reader realizes the extraordinary extent of the 
panorama of life which she unrolls before him 
by the magic of her art. In the numerical 
array of her characters; in the minuteness with 
which the most unimportant and incidental 
figures that flit, for a moment, across the page, 
are sketched, one is confronted with the uner- 

297 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

ring power of an unrivalled art. Even "Chad's 
Bess", who darts over the open space where 
Dinah is preaching; and "Jocosa", whom Mrs. 
Davilow desires to sit at the window for pro- 
priety's sake when Gwendolen expects Herr 
Klessmer, are modeled with that same essential 
vividness that is so wonderful in the portrayal of 
Casaubon, Dorothea, or Maggie. Is the secret 
of their creation to be found in George Eliot's 
own lines in "Armgart", when she makes her 
heroine say ; — 

"I am an artist from my birth 
By the same warrant that I am a woman; Nay 
In the added, rarer gift, I see 
Supreme completion." 

The analogy between England's greatest woman 
poet and the greatest woman novelist of English 
fiction holds further in the extreme seriousness 
and sense of responsibility in which each held 
her art. 

The artist is both born and made. In each 
of these women a most unusual culture is a 
factor with which to reckon. George Eliot was 
a great scholar. She had especially steeped her- 
self in the Greek and the Oriental philosophies. 
She read these in their native tongues. She 
was a devoted student of the Hebrew and not 
less that of the German. Above all, Positivist 
though she was, she read the Bible with unfail- 

298 



VICTORIAN LITERATURE 

ing devotion. The prelude to her daily work, as 
we are told by Mr. Cross, was the reading from 
the Bible and from the Iliad. She habitually 
dwelt in the atmosphere of high thought. Con- 
joined with this perpetual intellectual and spir- 
itual culture, was a temperament of exquisite 
sensitiveness and delicacy; an unfathomed ten- 
derness of feeling and unlimited capacity for 
friendship and affection; an unfailing sense of 
justice, and an incalculable ardor to be a chan- 
nel of blessing to the world. Her "Choir In- 
visible" owes its hold on humanity to the 
infinite power of its note of personal sincerity. 

In seeking the secret, the clue, to her unsur- 
passed power as a novelist, may it not be found 
in an analogy to the art of the great musician 
who transposes, at will, a composition from one 
scale to another .f^ George Eliot transposed the 
drama of common life to the plane of the loftiest 
range of influences. She threw upon it the 
searchlight of spiritual illumination. She made 
its basis the divine principle in man, and the 
progress of her comedie humaine was transposed 
to that key which revealed, before the mind of 
the reader, the evolution of this divine prin- 
ciple in every human being. Great scholar, 
great philosophical thinker that she was, she 
had familiarized herself with the Kabbala, the 
sacred book of the Jews; she had gone into the 

299 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

intimate and the profound depths of the Rosi- 
crucian philosophy; she had made her own the 
esoteric significance of the greatest Greek poets 
and philosophers; and these enormous forces, 
not as ornamental erudition, but as absolutely 
assimilated into her own consciousness, gave 
her that irresistible and unrivalled power that 
hardly finds comparison save with the dramatic 
range of Shakespeare. To relate this range of 
thought and of qualities of life to actual char- 
acters she did not seek classical impersonation. 
The emotions that Stephen Phillips would image 
by investing a Zeus, an Idas, a Marpessa, with 
their working out; that Shelley would have 
sought to portray in characters from mediaeval 
ages; that Tennyson would have presented in 
the guise of a Lancelot, an Elaine, a Vivian, 
a Merlin, — George Eliot portrays in the homely 
characters of provincial life in England. She 
has no Ulysses, no Lady of Shalott, no Gareth 
and Lynette; she does not resort to the age 
and the people pressed into service by Brown- 
ing in "The Ring and the Book." But the 
poor little insignificant Hetty, "with her butter- 
fly soul"; Tom Tulliver, Sister Deane, with 
her trophies in medicine bottles; the Poysers, 
Gwendolen, Rosamond; the complete range of 
Jewish life, from the vulgar to the sublime, as 
shown in "Daniel Deronda"; in all these and 

300 



VICTORIAN LITERATURE 

others that readily recur to the memory, George 
Ehot finds the men and women by means of 
whose meeting and minghng in the common 
daily life of humanity, she can reveal the 
spiritual drama of the evolutionary progress 
of the divine principle. For it is no lesser rev- 
elation than this which is the real presentation 
of life in the novels of George Eliot. It is the 
immortal glory of these novels that they con- 
cern themselves with the common lot. The emo- 
tions of a goddess may be sublime, but she is 
isolated in the realm of romance. With Lyd- 
gate, and Mr. Brooke, with Uncle Deane, and 
Stephen Guest, we are on familiar terms. We 
understand Maggie's temptation and all her 
inconsistencies. We have inconsistencies our- 
selves. We understand how Dorothea, sym- 
pathizing with Lydgate when he is caught in 
so perplexing a net of circumstance, could say: 

*'0h, it is hard! I understand the difficulty 
there is in vindicating yourself. And that all 
this should have come to you who had meant to 
lead a higher life than the common, and to find 
out better ways. . . . There is no sorrow I have 
thought more about than that, — to love what 
is great and try to reach it, and yet to fail." 

Mrs. Poyser "having her 'say' out"; Gwen- 
dolen, whose moral transformation takes place 
before the reader's eyes; Herr Klessmer, for 

301 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

whom Liszt, whom George EHot greatly ad~ 
mired, furnished the prototype; Sir Hugo, 
with his shrewd advice: "Be courteous, be 
obHging, Dan, but don't give yourself over to 
be melted down for the tallow trade." Mr. 
Gascoigne, the living type of the cultivated, 
easy-going English rector; Grandcourt, no longer 
a type in fiction but an inhabitant of the coun- 
try; Adam Bede, and Arthur Donnithorne; 
Dinah Morris, who is as real a figure in the 
world as is Florence Nightingale, or Frances 
Willard, — two women of the same angelic 
type, — what a group they are ! 

It is interesting to know, in whatever glimpses 
into her laboratory and its processes the reader 
may obtain, that George Eliot shared that 
experience described by many creative writers, 
that in all her best work a "not herself" entered 
in, and took possession of her. Mr. Cross 
relates that she told him that when engaged 
in the creation of her novels she "felt her own 
personality to be merely the instrument through 
which this spirit was acting." 

The great and almost determining factor of 
th^ play of influence on human life is suggested 
in this passage from " Middlemarch " : 

"The presence of a noble nature, generous in 
its wishes, ardent in its charity, changes the 
lights for us; we begin to see things again in 

302 



VICTORIAN LITERATURE 

their larger, quieter masses, and to believe that 
we, too, can be seen and judged in the whole- 
ness of our conduct." 

With a single exception the novels of George 
Eliot deal with English life with slight excur- 
sions Into continental experiences. The meet- 
ing between Deronda and his mother, the 
Princess Halm-Eberstein, with her sibylline 
presence and her passionate assertion: "Another 
life ! Men talk of another life as if it were beyond 
the grave. I have long since entered on another 
life!" the interview between Gwendolen and 
Herr Klessmer when he tells her of the artist 
life that it "is out of the reach of any but choice 
organizations . . . the honor comes from the 
inward vocation and the hard-won achieve- 
ment; there is no honor in donning the life as a 
livery", and many other never-to-be forgotten 
scenes in these great novels attest the marvel 
of George Eliot's capacity as an artist. Her 
"Romola" is a work apart. By what necro- 
mancy she invoked the fifteenth century of 
Florentine history, with its tragedy of the exe- 
cution of Savonarola, to rise before nineteenth- 
century vision, like an incantation by mediaeval 
conjurors, is a problem that defies pursuit and 
remains invested with perpetual amazement. 
No biographer of that dominant monk so inex- 
tricably bound up with the history of Florence; 

303 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

for whose associations with San Marco and the 
Palazzo Vecchio the passionate pilgrim seeks 
to-day, — not even such a biographer as the 
learned Pasquale Villari has ever presented 
the life of Savonarola with that illuminating 
intensity of George Eliot. Such romance as 
hers flashes its splendor through all that rich 
mid-Victorian period and leaves its indelible 
impress, its potent influence so long as English 
Literature shall endure. 



304 



X 

ANNIE BESANT AND THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 

"And he who flagged not in the earthly strife. 

From strength to strength advancing, — only he. 
His soul well-knit, and all his battles won. 
Mounts, and that hardly to eternal life." 

Matthew Arnold. 

"The Poet utters, the Thinker meditates, the Righteous acts; but he 
who stands upon the borders of the Divine World prays, and his prayer 
is word, thought, action in one!" Balzac. 

About 1880 a movement that might almost be 
termed a spiritual renaissance was initiated 
in London by a combination of influences, one 
of which was the reaction from an age of ma- 
terialism. A partial and often misconceived 
interpretation of science had conduced to that 
transitory phase of materialistic thought of 
which the correction lay in the larger interpre- 
tations of scientific truth. 

The "Esoteric Buddhism" of Mr. Sinnett 
was one of the first influences in the imparting 
of larger truth concerning nature, man, the 
origin of the universe, and the destinies toward 
which the race is moving. Mr. Sinnett pre- 
sented esoteric science as a complete spiritual 
system pervading all nature, "the most exhaus- 

305 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

live system of evolution that the human mind 
can conceive." Great as is the Darwinian sys- 
tem, it was simply " an independent discovery 
of a portion — a small portion — of the vast 
natural truth." This exposition of Mr. Sin- 
nett's able work was almost, if not quite, the en- 
tering wedge in that reconciliation of physics 
and spirituality that has progressed so far since 
that day, and in whose final acceptance Sir 
Oliver Lodge has been the most potent influence. 
The evolution of man, Mr. Sinnett pointed out, 
is not a process limited to this planet alone. 
He asserted that it was a result to which manj^ 
worlds in different conditions of material and 
spiritual development have contributed. Still 
further, he thrilled his readers by saying that 
the life and evolutionary processes of this planet 
are linked with the life and evolutionary proc- 
esses of several other planets. "One globe does 
not," said Mr. Sinnett, "afford Nature scope 
for the processes by which mankind has been 
evoked from chaos, but these processes do not 
require more than a limited and definite num- 
ber of globes. Separated as these are, in regard 
to the gross mechanical matter of which they 
consist, they are closely and intimately bound 
together by subtle currents and forces, whose ex- 
istence reason need not be much troubled to con- 
cede since the existence of some connection — 

306 




Aimie Besant 



ANNIE BESANT 

of force or ethereal media — uniting all visible 
celestial bodies is proved by the mere fact that 
they are visible. It is along these subtle cur- 
rents that the life-elements pass from world to 
world." 

Doctor Anna Kingsford, a woman of remark- 
able beauty and nameless charm, held dis- 
tinguished drawing-room audiences spellbound 
by a series of lectures afterward published under 
the title of "The Perfect Way; or, the Finding of 
Christ." She was enthroned as a modern Hypatia 
in London society until her early death in 1888. 

Anna Kingsford was the daughter of John 
Bonus, a prosperous shipowner and merchant 
in London, descended from a noted Italian 
family of the Middle Ages, one of whom is 
said to have been the architect of the Vatican; 
another the founder of Venice; still another a 
Cardinal of the church, with strong mystic ten- 
dencies; still another was a great occultist and 
alchemist. Heredity is an enormous factor in 
life, and these antecedents of Anna Bonus Kings- 
ford may serve to explain much in her own char- 
acter and destiny. As a girl, Anna Bonus is 
described as of fairylike form, with rich golden 
hair, and deep violet-hazel eyes, — changeful 
and luminous, — and with an aerial grace hardly 
suggesting human lineage. She was a born 
scholar and seer. 

307 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

She had great artistic gifts for music, painting, 
and drawing, and "her native exquisiteness of 
touch and tone never left her." She went to 
Paris and studied medicine, taking her doctor's 
degree. Her grave is in the churchyard at 
Atcham, near Shrewsbury (her husband being 
the vicar of Atcham), and it is marked by a 
Latin cross of white marble standing on three 
steps with the inscription: "In loving memory 
of Anna Kingsford, M. D., who died February 
22, 1888." The grave is said to be always 
covered with flowers, perpetually renewed by 
throngs of visitors who revere her memory. 
"She was one in whom the aspirations of life 
were entirely turned toward the eternal and 
the true," said one of the London papers. 

The work and strange personality of Madame 
Blavatsky have been a topic of discussion for 
more than forty years. Apparently she was 
one who had a work to do, quite irrespective of 
her eccentricities, and it was the criticism on 
her voluminous work, "The Secret Doctrine", 
written by Mrs. Annie Besant for the Review 
of Reviews at the request of Mr. William Stead, 
that first introduced Mrs. Besant to the expo- 
nent of modern theosophy. 

The path that had led Mrs. Besant to this 
point in her life is a strange revelation of destiny. 
Born in London on October 1, 1847, Annie 

308 



ANNIE BESANT 

Wood was reared with exceptional educational 
advantages; at twenty, a dreamy, imaginative 
girl, she married a young clergyman, the 
Reverend Frank Besant, chiefly for the reason 
that she supposed that, as a clergyman's wife, 
she would have greater opportunities of doing 
good! Realities proved unlike her dreams; the 
marriage was dissolved; and Mrs. Besant set 
out on that unknown path that has led her to 
the remarkable place that she holds in the world 
to-day. It was in 1889 that Mrs. Besant first 
became a student, and soon after the ablest 
exponent, of theosophy. In these twenty-five 
years she has given hundreds of lectures in 
England and on the Continent (where she has 
the advantage of being able to lecture to two 
or three different nationalities in their own 
tongues) through the United States, and in 
India. She is the president of the Theosophical 
Society and the author of more than twenty 
books, presenting with singular clearness and 
force the spiritual system which, rightly viewed, 
is in no contradiction or conflict with the 
Christian religion, but which supplements and 
completes it. 

Mrs. Besant has nothing in common with 
much of the inconsequential matter (not to call 
it by a harsher name) that is too often talked 
and written under the guise of theosophy. 

309 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

She has the philosophic mind; she is highly 
trained as a scientist; she enters into affairs of 
state with the keenness of a logician. She is 
abreast with every new invention, every scien- 
tific discovery that is of importance to human- 
ity. She has a matchless eloquence, a magic of 
oratory. Standing on the platform in her sim- 
ple white robe, with the luminous blue eyes 
contrasted with the silvered hair, with every 
sentence worded in its most perfect form, her 
vibrant voice falling like notes of music and 
audible in every corner of a vast auditorium, 
she has the majesty of a bishop or statesman. 
Her culture, her power of original thought, her 
divine enthusiasm for human progress and 
betterment of social conditions; her earnestness 
in the unfaltering pursuit of truth, her secret of 
touching universal interest, renders the term 
theosophist a too vague designation for such 
a thinker. She is quoted by the clergy in Eng- 
land and not infrequently by the venerable 
Archdeacon Wilberforce himself in his polished 
sermons in Westminster Abbey. 

The spring of 1914 has seen another service 
that Mrs. Besant is preeminently fitted to per- 
form, and which circumstances and experiences 
have peculiarly fitted her to render. This is 
nothing less than to act as a mediator between 
England and India. For several years her home 

310 



ANNIE BESANT 

has been in Adyar; each spring she comes to 
London for her series of lectures and confer- 
ences, and every two years she has made a prac- 
tice of coming to the United States. There 
has been great discontent smouldering in India 
under the English rule. The spring of 1914 saw 
a deputation of National Congress sent from 
India to England to lay before Parliament their 
plea for the separation of executive and judicial 
functions, and the repeal of the Press Act. 
Mrs. Besant, English by birth and affiliations, 
Indian by long residence and close observation, 
seemed to be ideally fitted to interpret the 
one country to the other. In her lecture before 
one of the largest audiences ever assembled 
in London, Earl Brassey in the Chair, Annie 
Besant delivered one of the most wonderful 
pleas for national justice that history has 
known. Lord Brassey, in his introduction of 
the speaker, alluded to the unrest in India as 
among the burning questions of the hour. 
Three hundred millions of people in India find 
the highest posts in their own land closed 
against them, yet education is advancing uni- 
versally; communications are open; the people 
read and understand all that is passing in the 
world. They have been patient till patience 
ceases to be a virtue. Mrs. Besant's dispas- 
sionate attitude, her judicial cast of mind have 

311 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

especially fitted her to be a mediator in this 
crisis. 

Mrs. Besant brings the message of the vistas 
of new life that are opening to the world in re- 
ligion, science, and art. She sees that on the 
physical plane, in the world in which we are living 
to-day, appropriated matter is highly organ- 
ized, and is becoming more and more fitted to 
be the servant of high intelligence. She sees man 
as an unfolding spiritual consciousness, creating 
for himself, as he unfolds, more highly organized 
bodies of matter, "with new senses, new powers, 
that awake with the unfolding. In the physical 
world of matter, our own world," we find her 
saying, "science is now recognizing not only 
solid, liquid, and gas, but also ether, and 
beyond ether, possible finenesses are arising, 
so that there may be many ethers, as indeed 
was suggested in that famous classification of 
vibrations which Sir William Crookes gave in 
one of his addresses a few years ago. ... In 
psychology new doors are opening. These 
higher bodies of man, as they become organ- 
ized, bring us into touch with one region after 
another of the universe around us, answer to 
vibrations from the outer world far away from 
our physical globe, bring us into contact with 
the subtler regions, the regions of thought as 
well as the regions of spirit." 

312 



ANNIE BESANT 

A discourse of Mrs. Besant's given in Queen's 
Hall on Superhuman Beings was treated as a 
marked event by the press. "London, prolific 
of surprises, can offer no spectacle so amazing 
as a lecture by Annie Besant," said the editor 
of the Christian Commonwealth, in a thoughtful 
discussion of this address in which Mrs. Besant 
eloquently affirmed the interpenetration of the 
physical and spiritual realms, and that "super- 
human beings move amongst us and take their 
part in the affairs of men." 



S13 



XI 

THE PRIMATE OF ENGLAND IN LAMBETH PALACE 

" A lovelier life, a more unstained, than his ! " 

Lambeth Palace is in the mediaeval portion of 
London. A group of castellated towers, an 
embattled gateway, a river flowing by, are its 
scenic surrounding, and its associations cover 
seven centuries of ecclesiastical dignity. It offers 
to the visitor as complete a contrast to the tides 
of modern life flowing ceaselessly past Hyde 
Park Corner and over Piccadilly Circus as if 
he had been mysteriously conveyed to another 
planet. The palace is the typical crystallization 
of all the majesty of the established Church. 
The Primate of all England, great in State as he 
is in Church, is more impressive, in many ways, 
than royalty itself, for to him, in his sacred 
office, royalty also yields reverence. 

The Thames, whose picturesque aspects under 
moonlight or starlight, in sunshine, or en- 
shrouded with mist and gloom, have been made 
familiar to all by the art and magic of Whistler, 
nowhere takes on a lovelier aspect than where 
Lambeth Palace rises on its banks. Does the 

314 







ft 



o 

■3 

u 



THE PRIMATE IN LAMBETH PALACE 

barge of the Primate wait for him at his palace 
stairs, which he will presently descend, clad in 
his impressive robes of ecclesiastical splendor, to 
embark for the other palace across the water? 
Or to take the seat reserved for his Grace in 
the House of Lords? The visitor is too late by 
centuries for this spectacle, but let him take 
heart; there is still a world of interest for which 
he is not too late. 

The present Archbishop, the Reverend Doc- 
tor Randall Davidson, whose official signature 
is Randall Cantuar, has been a resident in the 
palace since before he was called to his high 
office. He was here as chaplain to the preceding 
Archbishop, Doctor Tait; and Mrs. Davidson, 
the daughter of Doctor Tait, was born in Lam- 
beth Palace and has the distinction of being 
the only woman who has ever been both the 
daughter and the wife of an Archbishop of 
Canterbury. The Archbishop and Mrs. Tait 
gave to Lambeth in their day that same charm 
of exquisite courtesy of hospitality and beauty 
of personal life that so signally characterizes 
the present prelate and his family. 

Lambeth is a somber pile of red brick, with 
additions in many different styles, with a cer- 
tain aspect of feudal grandeur still clinging to 
its gateway and towers, not unfitted for the 
arch-episcopal residence. It has sixteen acres 

315 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

in gardens, added since the days when Henry- 
ordered the barge to stop that he might 
convey the royal displeasure to Archbishop 
Cranmer. 

Lambeth was given by Goda, the sister of 
Edward the Confessor, in the eleventh century. 
The irregular and spacious pile has undergone 
many changes, by extensions and additions, 
made in the prevailing mode of the time, during 
the past seven hundred years. 

It is an extremely interesting place for the 
antiquarian. The Record Tower contains the 
archives of the See of Canterbury; spiral stair- 
cases lead no one knows where; from the 
outer court is an opening into the Bishops* 
Walk, along the Thames, now less picturesquely 
termed the Albert Embankment. The Lollards' 
Tower possesses its fascinations for the histo- 
rian; and the great hall, now used as the library, 
appeals to every one. It is a hundred feet long 
and fifty feet high, with an elaborately carved 
oaken roof. In the center is a lantern bearing 
the arms of the See; it is surmounted by the 
archi-episcopal mitre; and the interior is lighted 
by rows of high windows, whose heraldic 
emblems and devices seriously interfere with 
any effort of the sunlight to enter. On one of 
these are seen again the arms and the date, 
MDCLXIII. Toward the lower end of the 

316 



THE PRIMATE IN LAMBETH PALACE 

library is a beautiful Ionic screen, adorned with 
the crest of the founder. The entire hall is 
wainscoted with somber oak; the floor is paved 
with mosaic, and is said to date back to Boni- 
face, the Archbishop in the thirteenth century. 
There are some thirty thousand volumes in the 
library, and there are constant and extensive 
requests to consult it which are granted, so far 
as possible, with the most liberal hospitality. 

The visitor finds the autographs of Cranmer, 
Fox (of Martyr fame), Tillotson, and Henry 
Wotten. There is also one of Charles I. There 
are richly illuminated manuscripts and rare 
books of priceless value. One of these is *'The 
Chronicles of Great Britain", dating to 1480; 
another is the "Golden Legend", printed by 
Wynkyn de Worde; there are fifteenth-century 
manuscripts, one most rare, the "Gospel of 
Mac Durnan", written about 900 a.d. and pre- 
sented to the city of Canterbury by Athelstane. 
There is a New Testament on vellum, a work of 
English art, the first copy of which belonged 
to Cardinal Mazarin; and there is the signature 
of Canute. 

The state dining-room of the palace, with 
its pointed ceiling, is adorned with the portraits 
of long- vanished Archbishops of Canterbury: 
Laud, Pole, Chicheley, Warham, and Arundel. 
There is also a panel portrait of Martin Luther. 

317 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

The chapel is most impressive. It has also 
the pointed roof, with an arch and triple lancet 
windows. The chancel bears the arms of 
Archbishop Laud. The altar is Corinthian, 
with rich colors and gilding; the floor is of black 
and white marble. Almost the only modern 
suggestion is a portrait of the late Archbishop 
Benson, painted by Hubert von Herkomer, that 
is placed in the library. 

There is a strange, gloomy, mediaeval Pres- 
ence Chamber, with faintly discernible mottoes 
and inscriptions scratched on the walls. One of 
these is ''Jesus est Amor meus'\ while another, 
in English, reads: "Jesus keep me out of all ill 
company, — Amen ! " It is believed the strange, 
dim portraits on glass of St. Gregory and St. 
Jerome, now placed in the library, formerly 
belonged to the Presence Chamber. The 
Gregorian father is disclosed as richly robed in 
full pontificals, with a closed book on which 
his hand rests, while the ancient inscription 
assures all who gaze upon it that none "who 
wore the triple diadem" were "more holy or 
more learned" than he. His period of sojourn 
on this planet was at the close of the sixth 
century, while his companion saint. Father 
Jerome, is assigned to a period two centuries 
earlier. This saint is depicted as lost in ecstatic 

318 







1-1 



Xi 
'^ 



THE PRIMATE IN LAMBETH PALACE 

meditation of a vision of angels, and he is cele- 
brated as 

"Devout his life, his volumes learned be. 
The Sacred Writ's Interpreter was he." 

The singularly youthful-looking portrait of 
Archbishop Chicheley, in one of the windows, 
seems comparatively modern in contrast to 
those of the mediaeval saints. 

One of the especial treasures of the library 
is a copy of the Koran, in folio, decorated in 
Oriental enamel and with paintings, and alleged 
to have been written by Sultan Allavuddeen 
Sijuky about the sixteenth century. This copy 
is considered by scholars to be the most valuable 
one of the Koran in existence. It was discov- 
ered in the collection of Tippoo Sultan at 
Seringapatam, by some of the oflScers of the 
British army, after the capture of the city. 
The signature of the transcriber of this copy 
has been disputed by Oriental scholars, some of 
whom consider it the work of Ali-ed-din, a lineal 
descendant of Mohammed. To the ordinary 
visitor to Lambeth these abstruse points do not 
possess much interest; it is largely the case of 
*'a rose by any other name"; but the treasures 
of mediaeval art, including these priceless rec- 
ords, folios, manuscripts, and signatures, allure 
many a booklover again and again. The long 

319 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

list of the librarians of the Lambeth Palace 
library is synonymous with that of many of the 
most celebrated antiquarians to whom the task 
was peculiarly congenial. One of the most 
famous of these was Ducarel, in the eighteenth 
century, during the primacy of Doctor Matthew 
Hutton, who simply consecrated his entire 
devotion on the deciphering and preparing of 
intelligible catalogues of the cryptic treasures. 
In the art of the "index" he was such an expert 
as to suggest that he would have sympathized 
with a Boston wit, who declares he would, at 
any time, rather have an index without a 
book, than a book without an index. Succeed- 
ing the delving Ducarel came the Reverend 
Michael Lort, whose passion was for collecting; 
later came the well-known and deeply-esteemed 
Doctor Samuel Roflfey Maitland, who "re- 
nounced a life of lettered ease in Gloucester to 
revel more freely and fully in the literary ban- 
quet presented to him at Lambeth." Doctor 
Maitland employed himself, too, in writings on 
the cheerful theme of the Dark Ages, and in 
erudite and fruitful meditations on various as- 
pects of the Reformation. The index that he 
prepared of the library in 1843 is shown to the 
visitor of to-day as a supreme specimen of varied 
literary knowledge. Doctor Maitland was suc- 
ceeded by a distinguished scholar of Oxford, 

820 



THE PRIMATE IN LAMBETH PALACE 

Reverend William Stubbs — an antiquarian and 
historian of great activity, who, after five years 
at Lambeth, accepted the chair of the Regius 
Professor of History in Oxford, and Curator of 
the Bodleian Library. Still later, he became 
one of the canons of St. Paul's. 

The great array of the portraits of Archbishops 
of Canterbury would suggest much of individual 
interest ; but as for interest, have we none in the 
life of the hour.^* Must we, perforce, "trundle 
back our souls" into bygone centuries, in order 
to discover sufficient inducements for existence? 

" The Present, the Present, is all thou hast 
For thy sure possessing;" 

and it was, apparently, by their own concen- 
trated devotion to their present that these by- 
gone worthies established such claim to our 
interest in them to-day. 

In many ways is the present Primate of Eng- 
land the heir of all the ages. As has been 
noted. Doctor Davidson entered on clerical life 
as chaplain to his predecessor; he became one of 
the special friends of Queen Victoria who made 
him Dean of Windsor; later he was, successively, 
the Lord Bishop of Rochester, and of Winches- 
ter, which by some legend or necromancy of the 
Church of England, is always regarded as the 
threshold of Canterbury. 

321 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

The hospitalities of Lambeth, under the 
graceful sway of the present Archbishop and 
Mrs. Davidson, are so extensive, so charming, 
so spontaneous in their cordial welcome that 
they invest with an enchantment all their own 
this stately and tradition-enshrined palace. 
The guest-rooms are seldom vacant. There are 
the visiting bishops, not only of England, but 
from all her colonies, and from Africa and 
America, as well, who are made to feel that the 
brotherhood of religion is more than a name. 
The bishops of Hereford and of Winchester are 
invariably the guests of Canterbury during 
their sojourns in London. English churchmen 
are liberally included in this gracious hospitality, 
as are men of letters, statesmen, scholars; and 
there is no more favorite direction for society 
in London to fare forth than across Westminster 
bridge. Invitations to dine or to a garden-party 
at Lambeth are accepted with the avidity that 
characterizes the welcome of a command to 
Windsor Castle or Buckingham Palace. 

Nothing in all luxurious London can be more 
pictorial than a dinner-party in the state dining- 
room at Lambeth Palace. The stately, somber 
apartment, formerly the Guard-room, still has 
that lofty, pointed roof of ancient days; the 
Tudor windows have been replaced by four of 
the early English, — the only innovation made. 

322 



THE PRIMATE IN LAMBETH PALACE 

These windows are decorated with a tracery in 
perfect correspondence with the rich carvings 
of the roof; the ancient wainscoting, rising six 
feet from the floor, is retained, and above this 
hang those rows of dim portraits of the long Hne 
of Archbishops, gone from all save history. 
They span a period of time from Henry VII to 
Victoria. This is the historic portrait gallery of 
the See of Canterbury. It is a little like dining 
in the basilica of San Paolo del Fuori, in Rome, 
where the portraits of all the popes, not except- 
ing the one with the diamond eyes, look down 
upon all comers and goers. In Lambeth the 
lawn sleeves and dark stole of the portraits are 
almost universal; but that of Cardinal Pole 
introduces a note of color in his scarlet cape 
and Oxford hood, while the close-fitting skullcap 
of Cranmer, the trencher-cap of Tillotson, and 
the stern face of Bishop Arundel are quite awe- 
inspiring. 

For a large dinner, small tables, sometimes 
to the number of from twenty -five to twenty- 
eight, each seating from six to eight guests, are 
in evidence. One of these dinners (given to 
visiting and colonial bishops in London and a 
few other guests) had its color scheme in white 
and green. On each of the small tables was a 
centerpiece of white flowers with greenery, — 
lilies-of-the-valley, white roses, carnations, or 

323 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

the narcissus, the poet's flower. The exquisite 
faience was in white, with the arms of Canter- 
bury on each piece, and the cut-glass wine 
goblets and other crystal bore the same. The 
dinner was as sparkling in conversation and 
repartee as is usual in a convocation of the 
clergy, who are by no means oppressed with 
solemnity on social occasions. An amusing 
story is told of one of the state dinners given 
by the Archbishop of Canterbury and Mrs. 
Davidson. It was a "bishops' dinner", and the 
guests represented several countries, including 
the United States. The butler announced each 
arrival, as is customary in English houses, and 
it chanced that the Episcopate of Missouri at 
that time was held by Bishop Tuttle. The 
butler of Lambeth, with usual formality, 
solemnly announced the entrance of the bishop 
and his wife as "The Bishop of Misery and Mrs. 
Turtle!" 

Nor is royalty lacking at the hospitable board 
of the Primate. Many of the members of the 
royal family (whom it is not permitted to in- 
dividually designate) are frequent guests in the 
palace, as are the Archbishop and Mrs. David- 
son at Buckingham and Windsor. 

As for actual work in the form of practical 
application and of an order that has no limits, 
no boundaries, no intervals, or termination, — 

324 




o 
p:? 



THE PRIMATE IN LAMBETH PALACE 

that overflows into nights, and Sundays, and 
midsummer holidays; that pursues and accom- 
panies the Archbishop like his own shadow, — 
no possible expansion of description could even 
faintly suggest its incessant and complicated 
nature. The claims upon the time and energy 
of Mr. Asquith, or of any Premier, cannot exceed 
those on the Primate. He has his duties in the 
House of Lords ; he has a correspondence whose 
dimensions exceed even those of Cabinet minis- 
ters. He has callers whom he sees (or, more 
rarely, does not see), but whose requests invade 
his time all the same, from dawn till midnight. 
A proportion of these, of course, are considered 
and decided upon by his secretaries, but the 
present Primate is a man of the most rigorous 
conscience regarding all that appears to him 
under the guise of duty; he is simple and fervent 
by nature, and is not less insensible to the human 
appeal than as if he were the vicar of a country 
parish. When, in the year of 1904, the Primate 
visited the United States, — the first time that 
a Primate of England had ever done so, — there 
was some consultation, not without its anxieties, 
in Boston, as to the manner in which he should 
be suitably entertained. Boston is accustomed 
to greatness, with which tradition credits her 
with long familiarity, but she had never had an 
Archbishop of Canterbury to entertain before. 

325 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

It was not regarded as fitting that his Grace 
should be domiciled in an hotel, nor yet in a 
private home; but Bishop Lawrence, with his 
characteristic felicity of decision, solved the 
problem by placing his own house in Common- 
wealth Avenue at the disposal of the Primate 
and his suite, while the Bishop and Mrs. Law- 
rence, with their family, betook themselves to 
his Cambridge house. Many of the clergy of 
Trinity Church and others remarked afterward 
that never was any gentleman more easy to 
entertain, more entirely unpretending and unos- 
tentatious than England's Primate, who pecul- 
iarly endeared himself to every one who had 
the privilege of meeting, or even of hearing him 
from the pulpit of Trinity. Never could the 
hearer of the sermon that he preached in Trinity 
Church lose the memory of its impressive beauty 
and its searching vigor of thought. It was in 
this discourse that the Primate asked: 

"Suppose we could now, in the attitude of 
reverential enquiries, have full access for a single 
hour to Him who is the Source and Object of 
our faith; and could ask Him what we would, 
and expect an answer; how the questions would 
rush to our lips. The life beyond — what is it? 
What is its bearing on these present working 
years .'^ What is its relation to the life about 
us?" 

326 



THE PRIMATE IN LAMBETH PALACE 

In these questions the Archbishop of Canter- 
bury crystallized the spiritual attitude of the 
age. In them were voiced that mental unrest, 
all the eager longing, that haunt the human 
heart. What, indeed, is the relation of this 
"life beyond" to the life that now is.^ Forever 
is the poet's insight true, — that we 

"... see but half the causes of our deeds 
Seeking them wholly in the outer life. 
And heedless of the encircling spirit world. 
Which, though unseen, is felt, ..." 

and which "flows like an atmosphere'* around 
the visible activities. 

The sudden death of Archbishop Benson in 
church at Hawarden, while a guest of Mr. 
Gladstone, is its own commentary on the in- 
cessant demands and the exhausting labor of 
the Primacy. No one of the deputations of 
working men who sometimes ask audience of 
the Archbishop has probably the least concep- 
tion that his life is far more exacting and bur- 
dened than their own, so far as actual work is 
concerned. On the other hand, it is equally 
true that the more bountifully one partakes of 
the life of the spirit, the more can he bear of 
even physical demands. 

The borough of Lambeth is not a rich and 
fashionable locality. It is the region of poverty 
and of perpetual want. There is something 

327 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

rather typical of the spirit of that religion, 
founded by Him who had not where to lay His 
head, in that the head of the national Church is 
domiciled, not amid the splendors of Park Lane 
or Belgravia, but in the midst of want and suf- 
fering. The Primate is one of the most effectual 
leaders, as well as an inspirer, of methods for 
social reform, nor is he ever unresponsive to the 
immediate and individual need. 

The convocations and congresses of the 
Church are apt to be like the opening of a very 
Pandora's box filled with complaint or petition. 
All manner of questions, important and unim- 
portant, arise, many of them apparently having 
but one quality, that of vexation. There is a 
seamy side to the great councils of organized 
religion. The incessant mechanism (for it has 
come to almost that) of Ordinations and Con- 
firmations is a demand that would tax the 
strength of Samson or of Hercules. The dic- 
tation of the numberless letters that must be 
brought to the personal attention of the Arch- 
bishop is, of itself, an exhausting tax on nervous 
force. 

But all this is the least attractive side of his 
multiform duties; not that the duties are un- 
attractive; it is those to which he joyfully gives 
his best; but the importunities and small vexa- 
tions that are inseparable from any life, and which 

328 




Basil Wilberforce, Archdeacon of Westminster 



THE PRIMATE IN LAMBETH PALACE 

multiply rather than diminish with multiplying 
points of contact with the world, are not want- 
ing. They are not to be ignored; still less 
complained of; but it would be a phenomenally 
superficial view of a great life that did not take 
these into consideration as an inevitable part of 
the daily panorama. Breakfast is served at an 
early hour in Lambeth Palace, as the Archbishop 
must give two hours to the direction of his 
correspondence before eleven o'clock, at which 
time he must be in readiness for personal inter- 
views, some of which may have been fixed for 
weeks in advance. This is largely administrative 
work, for which the Primate has a special gift, 
amounting to almost a sixth sense. His mind 
works swiftly, his vision is clear, and he can 
discern the difference between the possible and 
impossible, the desirable and the undesirable, 
with instant decision. It is really a kingdom of 
its own that an Archbishop of Canterbury is 
called to govern, and efficiency in swift, just, 
and practicable decisions is no small factor in 
the outfit needed to meet the multiple demands 
of the life. 

The present Primate has sources of strength 
that may not be recounted here: the sustaining 
sweetness of his domestic life; the ardent affec- 
tion of a multitude of friends; the confidence 

329 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

of his bishops and clergy; the deep respect and 
the mutual friendship between him and his 
sovereign; and more than all, the sustaining, 
the inspiring, the sacred and never-failing aid of 
the Holy Spirit. 



330 



XII 

ARCHDEACON WILBERFORCE AND WESTMINSTER 

ABBEY 

"There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as before; 

"All we have willed, or hoped, or dreamed of good, shall exist; 

Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power 
Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist 
When eternity affirms the conception of an hour." 

Robert Browning. 

Westminster Abbey is distinctive among all 
the great cathedrals of the world in its pervading 
atmosphere as a sanctuary of Christian worship. 
The impression of this is as deep as it is uni- 
versally experienced; and it is one difficult to 
analyze. For if it were argued that St. Peter's 
in Rome, Monreale in Palermo, the Duomo in 
Florence, San Marco in Venice, Notre Dame in 
Paris, and St. Paul's in London are so greatly 
frequented by lovers of art and architectural 
beauty who go primarily for artistic study and 
enjoyment, and less largely for purposes of 
religious worship, it could be replied that the 
venerable Abbey, too, is perpetually thronged 
by sightseers, and that its artistic and historic 
interest probably attract a far larger number of 

331 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

visitors than do its religious services. In fact, 
it would not require a clairvoyant to make the 
assurance that even of those who make up the 
congregations at the services, a larger proportion 
are present for the Abbey itself than for the 
special worship of the hour. There is one excep- 
tion to this, however, and that is when the 
Venerable Albert Basil Orme Wilberforce, D. D., 
Archdeacon of Westminster, Chaplain to the 
House of Commons, Select Preacher before the 
University of Oxford, is announced to preach. 
It can hardly be considered that the crowds 
that form in line, standing sometimes two hours 
before the opening of the doors, are drawn by 
the Abbey itself, as this spectacle is not seen on 
any other occasion of church service. But of 
these vast and unceasing throngs of visitors, 
waiting every day in the week to enter as soon as 
the hour arrives and who are frankly sightseers, 
there are few who do not feel the sanctity of the 
place. It is inescapable. 

St. Peter's, the Duomo, are commonly and 
constantly used as delightful places in which 
to meet friends for talk and promenade. No 
one thinks it out of place to make special 
Sunday afternoon rendezvous in the spacious 
interior of St. Peter's, where friends may prome- 
nade, catching, in the intervals of conversation, 

332 



ARCHDEACON WILBERFORCE 

some strain of music from the vespers in the 
Julian chapel; nor do the monks and priests, 
whom one so aboundingly encounters, appar- 
ently regard this as any lack of respect for the 
wonderful cathedral. It is cosmopolitan ground, 
and from those who devoutly kiss the bronze 
toe of St. Peter, to those who merely chat and 
talk, all are welcome. The vast basilica is fairly 
a social resort on Sunday afternoons in Rome. 
But on entering Westminster Abbey, an instinc- 
tive hush falls upon gay groups. The solemn, 
stately beauty is as impressive, as little to be 
evaded, as would be clouds of incense, or the 
rapture of music. Whether it is the majesty 
of sculptured marbles, — but other cathedrals 
have their sculptured marbles, — or the inde- 
scribable magnificence of the chapel of Henry 
VII, — but what magnificence could exceed 
that of San Marco in Venice, — or whether it is 
the intense impressiveness of the little old chapel 
of St. Faith, of rude stone, so low and dim 
and confined that it is hardly more than a cell 
lying between the Chapter House and the south 
transept, who may say.^* At its entrance is an 
inscription that this chapel is kept solely for 
silent prayer. Over the altar is a faded picture 
in which one faintly traces the outline of St. 
Faith kneeling before the Crucifixion, and on 
the altar is the inscription: 

333 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

" From the burden of my sore transgression, 
sweet Virgin, deliver me; make my peace with 
God, and blot out my offence." 

No audible word may be spoken in this chapel; 
and its sacredness can only be compared with 
that holy interior of the Cappella di Priori in 
the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, where Savona- 
rola celebrated his last communion on the day 
before his tragic execution. There is something 
in the atmosphere of the Abbey that instantly 
constrains every visitor to maintain the honor 
and dignity of the place and enter into its 
sacredness. The impression is as all-pervading 
as it is in the San Franciscan convent-church, 
the shrine of that "sweet saint" in Assisi. The 
'* seraphic city " is no more of a mystic pilgrimage 
than is a visit to the Abbey. One can but feel, 
in the lines of George Edward Woodberry: 

"England, I stand on thy imperial ground. 
Not all a stranger; 



England, 'tis sweet to be so much thy son!" 

No American who comes into this consecrated 
interior can fail to rejoice that he, too, has part 
and lot in its majesty, by ties of ancestry, or by 
the bond of a common language and a common 
literature. One's whole soul goes forth in rever- 
ence to the beauty of holiness that breathes 
from every vaulted recess, every group of sculp- 

334 



ARCHDEACON WILBERFORCE 

ture, every gleam of light that steals through 
the richly-stained windows, flooding the inte- 
rior, at times, with a splendor that suggests the 
glories of the New Jerusalem. It is here that 
one resolves anew to keep the faith; to press 
onward even to the high prize of the calling of 
God. For one is in instant communion with 
the great dead whom the Abbey entombs and 
commemorates. Here are unrolled the pages of 
English history; the warriors and the states- 
men, the pathfinders, and the men who have 
made science their clue and their guide to ex- 
plore the starry immensities, the men of arts, 
of letters; the poets and philosophers, — the 
holy men of old who brought their message to 
redeem the soul; all these immortal dead 

"who live again 
In minds made better by their presence, — " 

people these dim chapels. 

Here is a window to Edward the Confessor; 
one comes upon the tomb of John Wesley and 
Sir Isaac Watts; of William Wllberforce (the 
grandfather of the present Archdeacon), "who 
was carried to his grave by the Peers and Com- 
mons of England, with the Lord Chancellor at 
their head" in July of 1835; William Pitt, Earl 
of Chatham, the impassioned orator; Sir Robert 
Peel; Disraeli and the powerful Gladstone, whose 
obsequies were marked by the first state funeral 

335 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

in the Abbey, since that of Pitt; and whose wife, 
according to his own request, is entombed in 
his grave. It chanced to the writer of these 
pages to be present at the funeral of Mrs. 
Gladstone in the Abbey, in 1900, where flowers 
sent by the queen and the Prince and Princess 
of Wales covered the casket, and at which a dis- 
tinguished concourse was present. 

Interesting it is to stand by the tomb of Sir 
Isaac Newton, on whose stone is the inscription : 
^^Hic depositum est quod mortale fuit Isaaci New- 
toni.'^ Newton was born the year that Galileo 
died (1642), and all England regrets that the 
two famous lines that Pope wrote : 

"Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night; 
God said, Let Newton be! and all was light," 

were not engraved as the inscription. Fittingly 
do Sir John Frederick Herschel and Charles 
Robert Darwin lie almost side by side; not far 
distant is the tomb of William Thompson, Lord 
Kelvin, at whose last rites (in 1907) the Abbey 
was thronged with distinguished persons to pay 
their last tribute of honor: the Secretary of the 
Academie des Sciences in Paris; Vice-Chancellors 
of Oxford, Cambridge, and the Scottish uni- 
versities; delegates from the most eminent 
scientific societies, representatives of the royal 
family, and the various embassies in London. 

336 



ARCHDEACON WILBERFORCE 

It is the Poets' Corner that most visitors first 
seek; and here are the tombs, or memorials, of 
Chaucer (entombed in 1400), Milton, Dryden, 
Ben Jonson, Spenser, Southey, Wordsworth, 
Coleridge, Campbell; a memorial to Shake- 
speare and also to Burns and to Thomas Gray; 
Addison, Thackeray (to whom there is a memo- 
rial, his grave being in Kensal Green), Macaulay, 
Sheridan, and Dickens. Sir Henry Irving is 
buried here; and the flat marble slabs above 
the bodies of Tennyson and of Robert Brown- 
ing are seldom without their tribute of flowers. 
A memorial bust of Longfellow testifies to Eng- 
land's appreciation of the American poet. 

The tombs of historic personages in the many 
old chapels — kings and queens and other roy- 
alties — are so numerous and so incorporated 
into history that a pilgrimage through them is 
like opening the volumes in a library. In the 
beautiful chapel of Henry VII is the white 
marble recumbent statue of Dean Stanley, 
and in the same tomb is placed the body of his 
beloved wife. Lady Augusta. Dean Stanley 
(1815-1881) was the Dean of Westminster 
for the last seventeen years of his life. His 
whole heart was fixed on making the Abbey a 
national church, and on having its historic 
treasures become familiar to the nation. His 
work was unceasing, and his book on the Abbey 

337 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

is the most perfect interpretation of its signifi- 
cance. In the Chapter House are six windows 
with memorial scenes relating to the Dean and 
to Lady Augusta Stanley, one of which was 
presented by Queen Victoria, whose friendship 
continued with that fidelity which was so iden- 
tified with her Majesty. 

The beautiful cloisters of the Abbey draw one 
back again and again; and the Jerusalem Cham- 
ber, which has been the scene of so many his- 
toric meetings, is where Henry IV was brought 
to die; the Coronation Chair, the College Hall, 
the Jewel House, are all the scenes of perpetual 
pilgrimage. In the west cloister, entered from 
the Dean's Yard in which Archdeacon Wilber- 
force lives, was laid the body of his wife who 
died in 1909. The tablet bears the lines from 
Shelley : 

"Peace, peace! She is not dead; she doth not sleep; 
She hath awakened from the dream of hfe." 

On this memorial marble a bunch of white 
lilies, tied with white ribbon, is daily renewed 
by her husband. The very depth of his sor- 
row has seemed to liberate his spirit for more 
exalted and impassioned expression, and is rec- 
ognized as contributing even greater power to 
his discourses. 

Archdeacon Wilberforce is also the rector of 

338 



ARCHDEACON WILBERFORCE 

St. John's, where he is assisted by the Reverend 
Mayne Young and a staff of young curates, of 
whom the rector said to a friend: "What God 
gives to them they must give to others in their 
own way. I never interfere with their expres- 
sion." The son of the Lord Bishop of Oxford; 
the grandson, as has been said, of WilHam 
Wilberforce, the Archdeacon has an interesting 
heredity. Taking his degree at Oxford in 1865, 
he married, in the succeeding November, Miss 
Charlotte Langford, a briUiant and vivacious 
girl who in her years of study in Paris had become 
an ardent lover of the French literature and also 
of the Italian. Mr. Wilberforce's ordination fol- 
lowed soon after, and for a period he served as 
domestic chaplain in the bishop's household, and 
as curate of Cuddleston. Into the bishop's pal- 
ace in Cuddleston the young bride brought 
sunshine and joy, and life was full of promise for 
the new curate. Not long after he was called to 
be the rector of St. Mary's in Southampton, an 
important parish, where Mrs. Wilberforce de- 
voted all her gifts to aid the work. She had an 
original and creative mind, a rare faculty for 
organization, and a force of will that, while 
never obtrusive, was singularly persistent in 
steady force. Both the rector and his wife threw 
themselves into the great need of the community 
in preventive and rescue work, as it was called, 

339 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

and they both embarked on the crusade for total 
abstinence. 

The death of his father, the bishop, was the 
occasion of a letter from the Prince of Wales 
(later Edward VII) to Mr. Wilberforce, which 
is as follows: 

"Marlborough House, July 23rd, 1873. 
"My dear Wilberforce: — 

Although I have only had the pleasure of 
meeting you but rarely since we were at Oxford 
together, I feel I must intrude on your great 
grief in begging you and your family to accept 
from the Princess and myself our deepest sym- 
pathy and condolence at the irreparable loss 
you have sustained. I have had the advantage of 
knowing your lamented father from my earliest 
childhood, and during the last few years have 
seen a great deal of him, and I can never 
forget the many pleasant and instructive hours 
I have spent in his company when he was a guest 
in our house and elsewhere. His loss will be 
felt throughout the length and breadth of the 
land, as no one worked harder in his sacred 
calling than he did, and no one has left a higher 
name behind him than he has. I feel that I have 
lost a kind and valued friend and can hardly 
realize the thought that we are to meet no more 
in this world. Hoping that you will forgive my 
trespassing upon you at such a time, believe 
me, my dear Wilberforce, yours very sincerely, 

"Albert Edward." 

340 



ARCHDEACON WILBERFORCE 

In 1891 Doctor and Mrs. Wilberforce visited 
India. They were often on the Continent and 
made several sojourns in Rome, of which they 
were both very fond. He was called to be a 
canon of Westminster, and in 1900 was made 
the Archdeacon, continuing to be the rector of 
St. John's. The intensely interesting London 
life was full of personal enjoyment to the Arch- 
deacon and Mrs. Wilberforce. She took a deep 
interest in general affairs; she was an enthu- 
siastic Liberal, with strong sympathies for the 
Irish cause. She associated herself prominently 
with many public enterprises, such as the pro- 
motion of higher education and of political en- 
franchisement for women; their appointment 
as guardians of the poor, and with many en- 
deavors for bettering the condition of the poorer 
working women. Her keen intellectual enjoy- 
ment of all the opportunities in London, literary, 
scientific, musical, dramatic, was unbounded. 
She moved through all "the splendid show of 
society" eager, delighted and delightful, yet 
always unselfish, always ready to give her energy 
and prestige and most effective personal service 
for any need. Her whole heart was in her hus- 
band's work, and her highest joy was in his 
happiness. 

The charm of Mrs. Wilberforce made their 
home in Dean's Yard most attractive. She was 

341 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

the hostess, 'par excellence, by nature and grace. 
Her influence was a power in a large and briUiant 
circle. The distinguished stranger visiting 
London would have felt his visit incomplete 
without meeting Archdeacon and Mrs. Wilber- 
force. She received every one with that beauti- 
ful courtesy so characteristic of her, a grace 
which encompassed the guest like an atmos- 
phere. She was helpful to every one with whom 
she came in contact, and she especially inspired 
in all her friends a feeling of trust and reliance. 
She was not the friend or helper of mere moods 
and tenses; but her word, once given, was ful- 
filled to the utmost. Mrs. Wilberforce lived 
in the companionship of high and noble thought, 
and in whatever direction she was engaged, 
this quality of her life made itself felt. In her 
companionship the Archdeacon found a strength, 
a joy, and a perpetual and never-failing sup- 
port that has perhaps contributed more to his 
own greatness of purpose than can be measured. 
Their hospitalities were without limit in social 
or theological lines. Absolute toleration, uni- 
versal recognition of the best in each individual, 
was the rule of their lives. There are few creeds, 
or opinions, or causes, or varying orders of 
society that have not received welcome in their 
home. The visiting antiquarian was shown the 
legendary treasures of the Abbey; the musician 

342 



ARCHDEACON WILBERFORCE 

played his latest composition to them; the 
painter came with talk of his art, and the uni- 
versity professor, the traveler returned from 
farthest wanderings, the titled nobility or the 
earnest reformer, the poor man or woman need- 
ing help and encouragement, the clergy, and 
the ethical teachers and leaders of every con- 
ceivable class and shade of opinion were alike 
welcomed. In his own life the Archdeacon illus- 
trates the value of the counsel of his father, the 
bishop: *'Use the spare minutes." It is said 
that Bishop Wilberforce was remarkable for 
his ability to make use of any stray fragment 
of time ; he would write his sermons and answer 
letters during railway journeys, in a cab, any- 
where that a margin of otherwise unoccupied 
time was to be had. Nor was this any case of 
Ixion being bound to his wheel; but rather the 
life of freedom and liberty and peace of mind that 
is only experienced by the realization of work 
done and duties met within due time. It is, 
after all, the things he does not accomplish 
that burden man; or the things that he does not 
accomplish within due limits. 

The Archdeacon regarded the essential duty 
of the Christian minister to be the saving of 
souls from sin, guiding men into truth, making 
both their homes and their lives brighter and 
happier. His sympathies were always expressed 

343 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

fearlessly on the side that appealed to him as 
right, regardless of any mere popularity. When 
there occurred the unjust prosecution of William 
Stead, because of some matter published in his 
journal, Canon Wilberforce said: 

"To know that Mr. Stead, a man remarkable 
for tender sympathy and self-sacrificing readi- 
ness to succor the wronged, is prosecuted, makes 
him a candidate for our admiration rather than 
for our pity. ' Patiently to suffer for the truth's 
sake' is to lay up 'a far more exceeding weight 
of glory.' The fierce execrations cannot harm 
him. . . . To mention Stead's name in any 
assemblage of working men is to kindle an en- 
thusiasm, bursting out into cheer after cheer. 
. . . We are, each, emphatically, our brothers' 
keepers ; and identified with our Lord and Mas- 
ter, living in touch with Him, we can become in 
a measure our brothers' burden-bearers also. 
... It is for us to convince a fallen, sinning 
world that there is — not there once was — 
One among them Whom as yet they know not, 
and Whom to know is life eternal." 

The home of Mr. Stead was in Smith Square, 
at the very doors of St. John's church. It was 
also within a very short distance of Dean's 
Yard, so that for many years he lived as a near 
neighbor to the Archdeacon. Few citizens of 
London have contributed more valuable aid 
in almost every direction for the uplift of the 

344 



ARCHDEACON WILBERFORCE 

unfortunate classes, and for the best conditions 
of progress and the increase of opportunities 
for others than Wilham Stead, who nobly mer- 
ited the Archdeacon's warm support. He was a 
man whose intellectual power was only equaled 
by his moral genius. In establishing The Review 
of Reviews, he founded a periodical that has 
proved itself indispensable. He was the only 
journalist in the world who had access to 
crowned heads. He was modest, self-effacing, 
ideally the Sir Galahad of his day, and he died 
— as he lived — a moral hero. 

The preaching of Archdeacon Wilberforce 
has a charm that escapes and defies analysis. 
Its impassioned fervor is expressed in the choic- 
est and most polished language; his beauty of 
style clothes a penetrating and a vitalizing 
trend of thought. He believes in the divine 
image in man. He calls upon him to realize his 
birthright. Few preachers draw from such a 
wealth of resource as does Archdeacon Wilber- 
force. While he is a churchman in heart and 
soul, he has seldom greatly concerned himself 
with theological abstractions. His message is 
to character, which determines life. "It comes 
into him, truth; it goes out from him, life," 
might well be said. No prelate has perhaps 
more signally helped men in the practical ap- 
plication of the Gospel to conduct. He does not 

345 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

devote much time to bending over the crucible 
of controversy. With true Christian tolerance, 
with that large charity which is the keystone of 
the arch of Christian feeling, he sees the best in 
all, and sees "the marvellous interpenet ration 
of God with men, and of men with God." And 
who shall say that in such recognition is not 
the redeeming power for humanity? The Arch- 
deacon's message to the age has expressed itself 
in multiplied series of lofty, brilliant, and power- 
ful discourses. 

The Intercessory service on Sunday evenings 
at St. John's is fairly a return to the primitive 
gospel methods. It is simple, fervent, and spon- 
taneous, and prayers are offered for those who 
have sought this aid. 

This afternoon service in Westminster Abbey 
is a singular contrast to the simplicity of that 
of St. John's. The rich music of the organ 
under the touch of Sir Frederic Bridge and the 
exquisite singing of the surpliced choir fill the 
air; in the mysterious shadows a ray of sunlight 
suddenly falls from some unseen window among 
the carved arches, and rests on the slender, im- 
pressive figure of the Archdeacon in his scarlet 
Oxford hood, offering the one touch of color; 
while on every side, beyond the congregation 
assembled, — out of every surrounding recess, 
and niche, and mysterious archways, — peer 

346 




J2 



O 



ARCHDEACON WILBERFORCE 

those white statues, as if they were still another 
congregation gathered there to listen: in the 
dim shadows one almost fancies that he sees 
them bend forward, out of their eternal silence, as 
the marvellous voice of the preacher thrills the 
air. It is both a scene and an experience. No 
cathedral of the world has a corresponding 
spectacle. The very way in which all those 
groups of sculpture are placed, seeming almost 
to mingle as part of the congregation, in the dim 
light, makes an effect almost weird. What a 
picture Eugene Carriere would have created of 
an afternoon service in Westminster Abbey ! 

At its close, the audience depart, and the por- 
tals are closed. The Abbey is open on Sundays 
for the services alone, after which the throngs of 
people turn away, leaving the white statues to 
keep their watch over the immortal dead. 



347 



XIII 

THE SPIRIT OF LONDON LIFE 

" All our past acclaims our future: Shakespeare's voice and Nelson's hand, 
Milton's faith and Wordsworth's trust in this our chosen and chainless 

land. 
Bear us witness: come the world against her, England yet shall stand. 

"No man ever spake as he that bade our England be but true, 
Keep but faith with England fast and firm, and none should bid her rue; 
None may speak as he: but all may know the sign that Shakespeare 
knew." 

Algernon Chakles SwiNBtJBNE. 

Is that "sign that Shakespeare knew" any clue 
to the bewildering tumult of the London life 
of the hour? The language which would ap- 
propriately characterize it would savor of the 
wildest exaggeration; of the descriptions and 
the interpretations of Society, held up to the 
incredulous gaze, in the novels of Ouida. The 
novels of Disraeli picture nothing more artificial 
and apparently detached from the actual; there 
is nothing in the pages of George Sand that 
seems extravagant or impossible, compared 
with the literal facts of daily (and nightly) 
experience in the society life of the city that is 
held to be the very center of the highest intel- 
lectual and the noblest ethical ideals. The 

348 



THE SPIRIT OF LONDON LIFE 

cynic of the hour declares that the world has 
gone mad. One extravaganza crowns another, 
only to be exceeded by some still wilder inven- 
tion the next day. The tumult seems to in- 
crease and gather new strength, after the 
fashion of compound interest in high finance. 
The Cubist is surpassed by the Futurist; and 
the Vorticist acclaims superiority in fantastic 
devices over the Futurist. Neither Cubist, 
Futurist, or Vorticist would be of any especial 
consequence beyond momentarily adding to the 
gaiety of nations, were it not for the fact that 
it is not these particular cults, 'per se, but that 
which they typify, if indeed, they do not herald, 
that is of consideration. The moral censor 
declares that the feminine fashions of the day 
are largely responsible, in which he is quite in 
accord with Carlyle's Teufelsdrockh in recogniz- 
ing the importance of clothes. Is the audacity 
of fashion a whirlpool to engulf the follower in 
actual dementia? Is London, of all cities in 
the world, to witness another Saturnalia.'^ 

The speculation would savor of absurdity were 
it not so unhappily founded on reality rather 
than fancy. Life appears in the guise of trav- 
esty. Shams, counterfeits, absurd assumptions, 
masquerade in the streets and rival the Pied 
Piper in attracting their following. A charlatan 
calling himself by an enigmatical Persian name 

349 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

appears in a hall in Bond Street, ascends a plat- 
form, robed in white and purple and gold, a 
cap of stage jewels surmounting his lofty brow, 
and proceeds to pour forth the most absurd 
assertions to audiences that are unfailing, and 
who discover only too late that their "inspirer" 
has forsaken his respectable employment in a 
laundry in Chicago to enliven his existence 
by his ability to delude the unthinking. A 
woman who declares herself a "poet-priestess- 
prophetess" (whatever that may be!) a 
"Truth-Bearer" besides, and incidentally a 
"Soul Scientist", and a being whose personal 
companionship (at two guineas an hour) will 
work wonders for you in an "Universal Uplift", 
holds the center of her stage, and with some 
lapses from the traditional theories of Lindley 
Murray, assures you that through Soul Science 
and drinking of the Cup Sublime, will Woman's 
Day dawn in glory! 

The Militants do not concern themselves so 
much over sublime symbols and shekels, but 
to their vision the path of glory leads to the 
destruction of masterpieces of art, and of Mr. 
Asquith's windows. 

But in Mayfair and Belgravia, — is the game 
played with counters so entirely dissimilar.'^ 
How do these people, educated, supposed to be 
of choice culture, who have been everywhere and 

350 



THE SPIRIT OF LONDON LIFE 

seen everything, and who own the earth, so to 
speak, how do they set the pace? London's 
"smart" society has always exhibited the most 
superhuman persistence in amusement. It is 
always *' going on." From a morning concert to 
teas; from teas to dinner; from dinner to four 
or five balls between midnight and daylight, 
is nothing unusual. That is quite of the ex- 
pected, and is no more a subject for surprise 
and comment than is the ordinary course of 
daily life in a rural town. It is the metier of 
the mondaine. It is her destined career, from 
the time she is presented and makes her first 
girlish obeisance to her gracious queen, until 
age, or death, silences her eager activities. 
There is nothing in the present London season, 
as there has been in the historic past, to espe- 
cially call forth the consternation of cynic or 
censor. He may not, himself, by choice, or by 
the compulsion of causes over which he has no 
control, be in this magic whirl, but that it will 
exist wherever wealth, youth, and beauty exist, 
goes without saying. But it is not this fairyland 
of society that startles the latter-day observer. 
The great houses have always been the scenes 
of a pictorial splendor full of delightful allure- 
ment. 

It is the usual custom of the noted London 
hostesses to receive at the head of the grand 

351 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

staircase, its hand-rail lost in roses and smilax, 
its wide landings beautiful with statues, and 
the entire mise-en-scene entrancing to soul and 
sense. The guests may include royalty. Cabinet 
ministers, Indian princes who move to the 
rhythm of their rich jewels hanging from 
throat or wrist; men of the Army and Navy, 
blazing with orders; whosoever has just returned 
from their triumphs in the Imperial realm; 
peers and peeresses with their orders and 
jewels; the celebrities in art or literature; the 
scientist whose new discovery has thrilled the 
nation; beautiful women, young girls in all 
the loveliness that marks the debutante; great 
ladies whose names open for them every 
court in Europe, — it is all this renown and 
splendor that constitutes Society in London. 
To be admitted to it is no unworthy ambition. 
Its balls and dinners are to a greater or lesser 
extent the assemblages of the men and women 
best worth knowing in the world; if there are 
statesmen, there are also bishops, eminent prel- 
ates of the Church, the famous explorer, the 
newly-arrived distinguished stranger. Fashion 
is the handmaid of beauty, of exquisite art in 
dress, of decorations that harmonize with the 
splendor of the scene. The pure and refined 
court of Victoria was succeeded by one equally 
pure and refined under Alexandra, too brief 

352 



THE SPIRIT OF LONDON LIFE 

in tenure when closed with the lamented death 
of him who had won all hearts, Edward VII. 
The court of Mary maintains the unvarying 
high ideals of the still youthful queen. With 
fidelity to the royal traditions in which she was 
born and reared, she has steadfastly made her 
influence felt for all that is worthy and of good 
report. 

What, then, is the exciting cause of the pres- 
ent '^craze.'^" Is humanity degenerating and 
entering on a downward grade .^ That solution 
is untenable. One of the most recent of English 
novelists makes this serious arraignment: 

** Men and women are losing all restraint. . . . 
Never have entertainments been so deliberately 
audacious in luxury and liberty. Although 
anti-militant by class and instinct, something 
of the spirit of the suffragette seems to have 
touched the women of fashion and the society 
debutantes. Liberty has been their watch- 
word and the looker-on has been tempted to 
echo the cry of Madame Roland, '0! Liberie, 
comme on fa jouee en ton nom!'" 

The fancy-dress balls have been startled, 
rather than merely enlivened, by the eccen- 
tricities of the Futurists and the Vorticists, who 
have apparently vied with each other to make 
visible demonstration of the faith that is in 
them; there have been Apache repasts, and tango 

353 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

teas, and pleasure parties on the Thames that 
paid no heed to the resounding warnings of 
"Big Ben", as the hours were struck off by that 
deep boom. And the censor of the hour 
demands to know the occult cause of all this 
departure from former standards, and what the 
end is to be? He is inclined to take a gloomy- 
view of the entire situation. 

Meantime, there have been other festivities 
that quite defy infelicitous prophecy, such as 
the beautiful garden-party of the Premier and 
Mrs. Asquith; the splendid entertainment, 
dinner, and dance, which Lord and Lady Far- 
quahar had the honor of giving for the king and 
queen, and which revived the refinement and 
loveliness that has been so long associated with 
London life. Is the spirit of this life undergo- 
ing a change into something new and strange? 
Is the modern Corinna to descend from her 
tripod? 

Dean Inge of St. Paul's is arraigning the 
ethical tendencies of the day. "Ghosts once 
more walk abroad . . . the Medicine Man re- 
appears as a 'faith healer.' Christian Science 
churches and hotels at Lourdes" (which this 
scholarly and distinguished prelate appears to 
think are more or less one and the same), are, 
as the Dean considers, quite too actively in 
evidence. Yet there is nothing that need alarm 

354 




03 



o 
U 

H 



THE SPIRIT OF LONDON LIFE 

even so fine a critic and so true an exemplar of 
the moral life as is the Dean. Is it an Eliza- 
bethan poet who assures us that all change is 

"... direction, couldst thou only see." 

Is it not possible that the reason for all this 
tumult of extravaganza, which, indeed, is not 
limited to London, but which pervades the 
known world at this present time, is but the eddy 
in the tide of swiftly flowing progress.^ The 
Theosophist assures mankind that humanity 
is now ascending the sixth round of civiliza- 
tion; history, in the values revealed by perspec- 
tive alone, proves the truth of a series of definite 
crises, whose outcome was a better and a saner 
civilization. The French Revolution was one 
of these. Happily, indeed, if the twentieth- 
century crisis of evolutionary advancement 
holds nothing more tragic than a brief reign of 
folly, and escapes the terrible experiences that 
were undergone by France.^ 

Dean Inge, as well as that potent apostle of 
the age. Professor Eucken, holds that man may 
experience that "new birth", that awakening 
to the things of the spirit, that transition from 
the common experience of life to a new and 

^ When this was written, early in 1914, there was not even 
a thought of the war involving England, which broke out a few 
months later. 

355 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

higher sphere, even here and now. The Dean 
teaches this noble truth at St. Paul's. He gave 
before the Royal Institution a most powerful 
and convincing series of lectures, during the 
spring of 1914, carrying the same message. In 
truth, 

" The dawn is not distant 
Nor is the night starless." 

The spirit of London is affected by the evolu- 
tionary processes that are really reconstructing 
civilization. Our own poet, Longfellow, whose 
bust stands in Westminster Abbey in company 
with England's own poets and sages, — fit sym- 
bol of the everlasting bonds of fraternity, — adds 
to the lines quoted above the further assurance 

that: 

"God is still God 
And His faith shall not fail us, 
Love is Eternal!" 

Do we hear England's Browning assure man- 
kind of this blessed realization to come surely, 
and it may be swiftly, — 

"When Eternity affirms the conception of an hour!" 



356 



INDEX 



INDEX 



A 

Abbey, Edwin, British affiliations 
of, 263. 

, Mrs. Edwin, gift of costumes 

to London Museum, 138. 

Aberconway, Lord, 16L 

Abercrombie, Lasoelles, 159. 

Academic des Sciences, 336. 

, French, 172. 

Achilles, statue of, 35. 

Adams, Hon. John, Count Rum- 
ford's offer to, 59. 

Adyar, 311. 

Albemarle, Duke of, 58. 

Albert, Prince, of Monaco, 50. 

Albert Edward (Edward VII), 
letter to Archdeacon Wilber- 
force, 340. 

Alcott, A. Bronson, Emerson's 
words to, 170; diary extract 
characterizing Emerson, 170. 

Alexandra, Queen, personal in- 
terest in people, 193; court of, 
261. 

"Alice in Wonderland," 46. 

Alma-Tadema, Sir Lawrence, 91, 
108; influence on pre-Raphael- 
ites, 260; exhibition at Royal 
Academy, 261; imagination of, 
261. 

"Altiora Peto," 288. 

Ameresekera, M., 160. 

Angell, Norman, 163. 

Anne, Queen, 213. 

Annunzio, Gabriele d', enthu- 



siasm for London, 12; quoted, 
12. 

"Apologia pro vita sua," 101. 

Apsley, Lord, 31. 

House, 3, 193. 

Arabia, 2. 

"Arabian Nights," 193. 

Argyle, Duke and Duchess of, 135. 

, Princess Louise, Duchess of, 

152. 

Aristophanes, 56. 

Aristotle, lyceum of, 16, 56. 

Army and Navy Club, 147, 149, 
173. 

Arnold, Edwin, Oriental philoso- 
phy interpreted into English 
verse by, 274; laureate of Bud- 
dhist faith, 274. 

, Matthew, 45; sweet reason- 
ableness of, 245. 257, 259; ideals 
of, 265, 273. 278, 280; influence 
of, 285; lecture in Boston, 285; 
words on Newman, 285; vision 
of, 286; poetic quality of, 286, 
287; criticism of, 287; friendship 
with Tennyson, 287; quoted, 
287. 

Arras, 121. 

Arrhenius, Dr. Svante, Director 
Nobel Institute of Chemistry, 
56; lecture of, 56. 

Art and Drama Society, 161. 

"Art and Poetry," 257. 

"Art of Fiction, The," 63. 

Arts Club, 151. 

Arundel, Earl of, 183. 



359 



INDEX 



Arundel Club, 151. 

Ascot, date of, 213; visited by 

Queen Victoria, 213; display 

at, 216; visit of royalties to, 

217. 
Asquith, Hon. Henry (Premier), 

244; duties of, compared with 

Primate, 325; garden party of, 

354. 

, Mrs., 354. 

Assisi, shrine of, 334. 
Athelstane, 213, 317. 
Athenaeum Club, 147; library of, 

147; bust of Milton bequeathed 

by Anthony TroUope, 148; 

membership of, 148, 149. 
Athens, Acropolis of, 16. 
Auer, Leopold, Margel Gluck 

studies with, 200. 
Augusta Victoria, Princess, 217. 
"Aurora Leigh," 265. 
Austen, Jane, 46. 
Austin, Alfred, 289. 
Authors Club, 164, 165. 
"Autocrat," the, 4. 
Avenue de I'Opera, 192. 



B 



Bachelet, M., invention of, 235, 
236. 

Bacon, Lord, 68. 

Baden-Powell, Sir, 166. 

Bagot, Richard, 164; Roman ro- 
mance of, 289. 

Balbi, Marchesa, portrait of, 
43. 

Balfour, Lady Frances, president 
of Lyceum Club, 153. 

Ball, Sir Robert, 166. 

Banks, Sir Joseph, 60. 

Barlow, Jane, stories of, 279; 
musical gifts of, 279. 

, Hon. Lady, address of, 163. 

Bateson, Professor William, 54; 



president of British Associa- 
tion, 78. 
Battenberg, Prince and Princess 

Louis of, 200. 
, Princess Beatrice of, friend- 
ship with Eugenie, 199. 

Bedford, Adeline, Duchess of, 
258. 

"Bells and Pomegranates," 258. 

Benson, Arthur Christopher, 150, 
166. 

, Dr. Edward W., Archbishop 

of Canterbury, 329; death of, 
329. 

, Monsignor Robert, lecture 

at Royal Institution, 55. 

Beresford, Lord Charles, 36, 40. 

Besant, Annie, 166; "Secret Doc- 
trine" reviewed by, 308; destiny 
of, 308; marriage of, 309; presi- 
dent of Theosophical Society, 
309; lectures of, 309; eloquence 
of, 310; personality of, 310; life 
in Adyar, 311; diplomatic work 
between England and India, 
311; message of, 312; quoted, 
312; tribute to, 313. 

Bever, Sir William, Stafford House 
presented to London by, 134. 

Bhownagree, Sir Mancherjee, 161. 

Bishop, Henry, 54. 

Blackmore, Richard Doddridge, 
288. 

Blake, William, 91. 

Blast, The, 158. 

Blavatsky, Mme. Helena Pe- 
trovna, 308. 

"Blessed Damozel, The," 258. 

Blessington, Lady, 20; beauty of, 
129. 

Bodleian Library, 239; amusing 
experience in, 239, 240. 

Boehm, Sir Joseph Edgar, 30. 

Bois du Boulogne, 20. 

Bombay, 280. 



360 



INDEX 



Bose, Jadakis Chimder, 55. 

Bossanquet, Dr., 162. 

Boston Public Library, 138; libra- 
rian of, 238. 

Bourdillon, Francis William, 
quoted, 282. 

Brahma, 259. 

Brassey, Earl, Annie Besant in- 
troduced by, 311; speech re- 
garding India, 311. 

, Lady, 44; museum of, 44. 

Brewster, Sir David, 73; inven- 
tions of, 270. 

Bridge, Sir Frederick, musical art 
of, 346. 

Bridges, Dr. Robert, 289. 

British Association, organization 
of, 73; object of, 73; notable 
presidents of, 74; Sir William 
Crookes's address before, 74; 
epoch-making addresses before, 
75; Sir Oliver Lodge's presi- 
dency of, 78; Australian meet- 
ing of, 78. 

British empire, 35. 

British Museum, 138, 141, 238. 

Bronte, Anne, 104. 

, Bramwell, 105. 

, Charlotte, Richmond's 

crayon portrait of, 104; long- 
lost portrait of the three sisters 
in the National Gallery, 104; 
compared with George Eliot, 297. 

, Emily, portrait of, 105. 

Brookes, Norman, cricket game 
of, 222. 

Brooks, Rt. Rev. Phillips, 45; 
sermon in the Temple Church, 
182. 

Brown, Ford Madox, leading 
founder pre-Raphaelite move- 
ment, 257. 

Brown and Shipley, 46. 

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 
quoted, 3, 243, 252; portrait of. 



104; Dowden's words of, 265; 
supreme gift of, 296. 

Browning, Oscar, intimacy with 
George Eliot, 130. 

, Robert, 21, 45; portraits of, 

106, 187, 190, 201; social settle- 
ment in honor of, 251; work- 
man's amusing allusion to, 253; 
spiritual vigor of, 291; message 
of, 291; social life of, 292; friend- 
ship with Tennyson, 292; 
quoted, 356. 

, Robert Barrett, fondness for 

Athenaeum Club, 148; president 
of Roljert Browning Settlement, 
251; quoted, 252. 

Bruce, Lady Augusta (see also 
Stanley), Queen Victoria's lady 
in waiting, 27; friendship of 
Queen for, 27, 28; letter to Dean 
Stanley, 28, 29. 

Buckhounds, master of the, 217. 

Buckingham Palace, new front of, 
196, 243, 322. 

Buckle, Charles, 67. 

Buddha, 160, 161. 

Buddhist Society, 160, 161. 

Bulwer, Edward Robert ("Owen 
Meredith"), first Earl of Lytton, 
homes of, 21; quoted, 59; diplo- 
matic life of, 290; poetry of, 290. 

, George (Sir Bulwer-Lytton), 

occult romance of, 288. 

Burdett-Coutts, Baroness, 20, 45, 
193. 

Burgoyne, Sir John Fox, statue 
of, 147. 

Burlington House, 68, 69, 70. 

Burne-Jones, Sir Edward, 91; cre- 
ations of, 122; recognition of, 
123; exhibitions of work at the 
Grosvenor, 201. 

Burns, Robert, 54. 

Burton, Decimus, 35* 

Byron, Lord, 20. 



361 



INDEX 



Came, Hall, 164. 

Campbell, Rev. R. J.. 250. 

Canterbury, Archbishop of (Rt. 
Rev. Dr. Randall Thomas 
Davidson, "Randall Cantuar"), 
315; early life of, 321; Queen 
Victoria's friendship for, 321; 
honored positions of, 321; hos- 
pitalities of, 322, 324; visit to 
Boston, 326; sermon in Trinity 
Church, 326; sustaining re- 
sources of, 329, 330. 

, Archbishops of, 317; See of, 

323. 

Canute, 317. 

Capella di Priori, 334. 

Carleton Club, 147, 149. 

Carlyle, Thomas, 21, 101; bust 
of, 143; clarion call of, 232; 
Hutton's comment on, 271; 
quoted, 272. 

Club, 142. 

Caroline, Queen, 32. 

Carriere, Eugene, scenic painting 
of, 347. 

Carson, Sir Edward, 38. 

Cassel, Felix, 39. 

Cassells, the, 191. 

Castlereagh, Lord, 39. 

Catherine of Braganza, 184. 

Cecil, Lord Robert, 38, 40. 

Chamberlain, Austen, 38, 39. 

Champs Elysees, the, 25. 

Chancellor, Beresford, quoted, 
89, 90. 

Chantrey, Sir Francis, 32; bust 
of, 107. 

Chapel of Henry VH, 337; statue 
of Dean Stanley in, 337. 

of St. Ethelreda, 185. 

of St. Faith, 333; inscription 

in, 334. 

of Sardinia, 186. 



Chapel, Royal, 241. 

Chapter House (Westminster 

Abbey), 338. 
Charles I, portrait of, 33. 
Charles H, 33. 
Chemical Society, 70. 
Chesterfield, Lord, 205. 

House, 204, 205. 

Chesterton, Gilbert, 165. 
Chicheley, Archbishop of Canter- 
bury, 319. 
"Choir Invisible, The," 299. 
Christian, Prince of Schleswig- 

Holstein, 50. 
Christian Fellowship Club, 166. 
"Christmas Eve and Easter Day," 

258. 
"Chronicles of Carlingford," 297. 
Church, Prince of, 2. 

, St. Clement Danes, 184. 

, St. Dunstan's, 184. 

, St. John's, 239, 344. 

, St. Martin's, 83. 

, St. Peter's, 31. 

Churchill, Lady Randolph, 152. 
Cibber, Colley, Pope's lines on, 

21. 
Civil Engineers, Society of, 70. 
Clarendon, Lord Chancellor, 58. 
Clifford, Prof. William Kingdon, 

75. 

, Mrs., 152. 

Clough, Arthur Hugh, bust of, 

106. 
Club, Army and Navy, 147, 149, 

173. 

, Arts, 151. 

, Arundel, 151. 

, Athenaeum, 147; library of, 

147; bust of Milton bequeathed 

by Anthony TroUope, 148; 

membership of, 148, 149. 

, Authors, 164, 165. 

, Carleton, 147, 149. 

, Carlyle, 142. 



362 



INDEX 



Club, Christian Fellowship, 166. 

, Cycle, 227. 

, Duty and Discipline, 161. 

, Empress, 154. 

, Futurist, 156, 157, 158, 353. 

, Garrick, 150, 151. 

, Ghost, 167, 168. 

, International Psychical Re- 
search, 166, 167. 

, Ladies, 152. 

, Lyceum, 152, 154. 

, Mermaid, 172. 

, National, 150. 

, Occult, 155. 

, Poetry, 158, 159. 

, Sesame, 155. 

, St. Stephen's, 150. 

, Times Book, 165. 

, University, 154. 

, Writers, 168. 

Clyde, Lord (Colin Campbell), 
statue of, 147. 

Coleman, Charles Caryll, Landor 
portrait by, 103. 

Collie, Prof. Norman, 59. 

Collins, Wilkie, romance of, 288. 

Columbus, 197. 

"Commonwealth, the Christian," 
166; editor of, 313. 

Connaught, Duke of, 50. 

, Prince Arthur of, 43. 

Constable, Miss Isabel, ninety- 
five pictures of Constable 
presented to the Albert and 
Victoria Museum by, 63, 119. 

, John, 91; works of, 99, 119. 

Conway, Richard Seymour, 124, 
125. 

Cooper, Edith, 276. 

"Coordination of Modes of Mo- 
tion," 72. 

Copernicus, portrait of, 70. 

Copley, Sir Godfrey, 69. 

. John S., 91. 

Corder, Dr. Frederick, 54. 



Corelli, Marie, 299. 
"Cornwall, Barry," pseud., 20. 
Correggio, 33, 90. 
Corson, Dr. Hiram, 186; William 

Watson's fame prophesied by, 

204. 
Cotton, Sir Robert, 149. 
Council, London City, 223. 
Coventry, Earl of, 216. 
Cox, David, 91. 
Craik, Dinah Mulock, 283; quoted, 

283. 
Cranmer, Archbishop, 316. 
Crewe, Marquis of, 7. 
Crich ton-Browne, Sir James, 51. 
Cromwell, Oliver, 184. 
Crookes, Sir William, 68; address 

of, 74, 312. 
Cross, John, 299. 
Crystal Palace, 222. 
Cuddleston, curate of, 339. 
Curzon, Earl of, 8. 
Cust, Lionel, 100, 
Cycle Club, 227. 

D 

"Daniel Deronda," 300. 
Darwin, Dr. Charles Robert, por- 
trait of, 104; statue of, 184. 

, Sir George, 74. 

Davidson, Randall Thomas, see 

Canterbury. 
, Mrs. Randall Thomas (nee 

Tait), brilliant destiny of, 315. 
Da vies, Mary (Lady Grosvenor), 

30. 
Davy, Sir Humphry, 60, 64; 

Copley medal bestowed on, 69. 
" Dead Year, A," 274. 
Dean's Yard, 338, 341. 
" Decameron," the, of Boccaccio, 

139. 
"Z)e oribus Ccelestium Revolutioni- 

bus," 70. 



363 



INDEX 



Derby, Lord, gold vase won by, 
218. 

, race, 218. 

Devonshire, Duke and Duchess 
of, 196; Queen Mary dines with, 
196. 

House, 193, 206. 

Dewar, Prof. Sir James, 55. 

Dickens, Charles, 20; London of, 
78; acted before Queen Victoria, 
206. 

Dilke, Lady Emilia {nee Strong), 
120, 293. 

Diploma Gallery, 115, 117. 

Disraeli, Lord, 20; Queen Vic- 
toria's fondness for, 275. 

Domesday Book, 181. 

Dorchester House, 19, 42, 43. 

Dore Gallery, 80. 

Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan, 164, 
289. 

Dudley, Earl of, 11. 

Dunsany, Lord, address on Po- 
etry, 159. 

Duomo, the, 331. 

Diirer, Albert, 71. 

Duty and Discipline Club, 161. 

Dyer, Dr. Frank Watson, astro- 
nomical work of, 55. 

E 

Edward VII, coronation medal of, 
6, 135; London of, 192; corona- 
tion of, 192; charm of, 353; 

Edward the Confessor, 34, 316, 
338. 

Egypt, Lord Cromer's work on, 7, 
79. 

Eleusis, 254. 

Elgin, Lord, 44. 

, marbles, 139, 140. 

" Eliot, George," pseud., 104, 105; 
fame of, 296; art of, 297; views 
of, 298; scholarship of, 298, 



300; quoted, 298, 300, 303; 
romance of, 304. 

Elizabeth, Queen, 183. 

Ely House, King Henry's resi- 
dence in, 185. 

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 45, 170; 
quoted, 26, 170, 253, 272, 284. 

Empress Club, 154. 

"Esoteric Buddhism," 305. 

Essex, Earl of, 183. 

Eiicken, Prof. Rudolf, convictions 
of, 355. 

Eugenie, Ex-Empress, home of, 
199. 

Evelyn, John, 70, 183. 



Fabian Society, 142, 143, 253. 
" Faerie Queene, The," 178. 
Fairfax, Lord, Milton's sonnet to, 

187. 
Faraday, Isabel, gift to Browning 

Settlement, 252. 
, Michael, discoveries of, 51; 

characterization by Tyndall, 

62, Q5; statue of, 65. 
Farnboro House, 199. 
Farnol, Jeflfery, 290. 
Farquahar, Lord and Lady, 354. 
Farrar, Canon, 45. 
"Fashion in Art and Industry," 

Dr. Waldstein on, 71. 
Fawcett, Mrs. Millicent, 37. 
Fellows, Sir Charles, 140. 
Fenwick, Mrs. Bedford, 152. 
"Field Michael," pseud., 275. 
Fielding, Anthony Vandyke Cop- 
ley, 91. 
"Fiona Macleod," pseud., 275. 
Flaxman, John, lecture of, 63. 
Florence, 12; Villari's history of, 

303. 
"Fount, The Sacred," 116. 
Fowler, Prof., 116. 



364 



INDEX 



Fra Angelico, 90. 

Francillon, Robert Edward, 288; 
Louise Chandler Moulton dis- 
cussed by, 244. 

Franklin, Benjamin, 69. 

, Sir John, statue of, 147. 

Frederick, Empress, 128. 

French Institute, 69. 

Froude, Hurrell, 101. 

, James Anthony, 104. 

Fuller, Margaret (Marchesa d'Os- 
soli), quoted, 273. 

Futurist Club, 156, 157, 158, 353. 

G 

Gainsborough, Thomas, 91. 

"Galahad, Sir," 336. 

Gollancz, Prof., lecture of, 54. 

Gallery, Diploma, 115, 117. 

, Dore, 80. 

, Grosvenor, 201. 

, National, 13, 81, 100. 

, National Portrait, 100, 108. 

, Tate, 81, 108. 

, Uffizi, 88. 

, Wallace. 124. 

, Waterloo (in Apsley House), 

33. 

Galsworthy, John, 290. 

Garibaldi, 204. 

Garnett, Dr. Richard, 276. 

Garrick Club, 150. 

Gaskell, Mrs., 135. 

Gennadius, M., 6. 

Geological Society, 70. 

George, King, 199, 213; George 
and Mary, 7; visit to Ascot, 
217. 

Ill, 30. 

, Lloyd, character of, 244, 

245; efficiency of, 246. 

Georgina, fourth Duchess of Dev- 
onshire, salon designed by, 206. 

" Germ, The," 257, 258. 



Ghost Club, 167, 168. 

Gilbert, Sir John, 91. 

Gladstone, William Ewart, 45; 
statue of, 184; biography of, 
277; state funeral of, 327. 

— , Mrs., funeral of, 336. 

Gliick, Margel, musical art of, 
200. 

Goda, 316. 

Goetze, Sigismund, lecture of, 56. 

Golden Book, 144. 

Goldsmith, William, bust of, 182. 

Gordon, Gen., 189. 

Gosse, Edmund, 150, 159, 272; 
criticism of, 276; collabora- 
tion with Dr. Garnett, 276. 

" Great Britain, Chronicles of," 
317. 

" Great Illusion, The," 163. 

Greta Lodge, 278. 

Griffin, Prof. Hall, 252. 

"Griffith Gaunt," 288. 

Grisi, Mme., 204. 

Grosvenor, Lord, 30. 

Gallery, 201. 

House, 20. 

Grote, Sir George, 31; history of 
Greece, 263. 

H 

Haddon Hall, 194. 
Haden, Seymour, 152. 
Hadrian, villa of, 207. 
Hageby, Miss Lind Af, 156, 163, 

164. 
Haggard, Rider, 279. 
Haifa, 292. 

Hales, Samuel, quoted, 182. 
Hall, Newman, 45. 
Hallam, Henry, 270. 
Halle, Edmund, portrait of, 70. 
Hamerton, Sir Gilbert, quoted, 

93. 
Hampstead Heath, 82, 224, 225. 



365 



INDEX 



"Hapsburg Monarchy, The," 55. 
Hardie, Hon. Keir, 230. 
Hardy, Sir Thomas, 288. 
Hardwicke Society, 163, 164. 
Harked, Sir John Allen, electric 

properties of matter explained 

by, 54. 
Harrison, Mary St. Leger {nee 

Kingsley), "Lucas Malet," 

pseud., 279. 
Hawarden, 327. 
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, quoted, 

45, 190. 
Hayter, Sir John, Queen Victoria 

painted by, 107. 
Helen of Troy, 35. 
Hellenic, 239. 

Hemans, Felicia Dorothea, 274. 
Hemmer, Prof., 274. 
Henley, William Ernest, quoted, 

13, 281. 
Henrietta Maria, Queen, 184. 
Henry IV, King, 177. 
Henry VII, King, chapel of, 337. 
Henry VIII, King, 34, 213. 
Herbert, Lady, 152. 
Hercules, bust of, 207; Seven 

Labors of, 275. 
Hereford, Bishop of, 320. 
Herkomer, Sir Hubert von, 318; 

portrait of Archbishop Benson 

painted by, 318. 
"Hermes, Exhortation to," 256. 
Herschel, Sir John Frederick, 

69; correspondence with Mrs. 

Somerville, 280. 
Hertford, Charles, third Marquis 

of, 124, 125. 

, Marchioness of, 125. 

, Richard Seymour Conway, 

fourth Marquis of, 124; bril- 
liant life of, 124, 125; Parisian 

home of, 125, 126. 
House. 122, 124, 126, 127, 

129, 134. 



Hichens, Robert, romance of, 

289. 
Higginson, Col. Thomas Went- 

worth, 45; quoted, 210; Prof. 

Knight complimented by, 210; 

visit to Martineau, 210. 
Hobbes, John, 70. 
Hodder and Stoughton, 191. 
Hogarth, William, 91. 
Holland, Earl of, 60. 
Holmes, Charles John, Director 

of National Portrait Gallery, 

100. 
, Dr. Oliver Wendell, 4, 164; 

conversation analyzed by, 171. 
Holt, Lord Chief Justice, 186. 
Holy Hill, the. 86. 
Homer, quoted, 48, 56. 
Hooker. Archbishop. 182. 
House, Apsley, 19, 193. 

, Arundel, 183. 

. Burlington, 68, 69, 70. 

, Chapter (Westminster Ab- 
bey). 338. 

, Chesterfield, 204. 205. 

, Devonshire, 20, 193. 206. 

, Dorchester. 19, 42. 43. 

, Ely. King Henry's residence 

in. 185. 

, Farnboro. 199. 

, Grosvenor, 20. 

. Hertford, 122, 124, 126, 127, 

129i 134. 

, Lansdowne, 4. 5, 207. 

, Somerset. 184, 203. 

, Spencer. 185. 

, Stafford, 136, 137. 

of Lords. 315. 

Hueffer. Ford Madox, 164. 
Huggins, Sir William, portrait of, 

64; Collier's portrait of, 105; 

scientific work of, 257, 270, 

271. 
"Hundred Days, The," 45. 
Hunt, Holman, 108. 



366 



INDEX 



Hutton, Dr. Matthew, 320. 

, Richard Holt, Carlyle criti- 
cized by, 271. 

Huxley, William, 45, 65; lectures 
described by Smalley, 65, 67, 
72, 75, 260, 293. 

Hyde Park Corner, 19; Henry 
James's impression of, 40, 41. 

Hyslop, Dr. James H., address of, 
168. 



Hiad, the, 211. 

"Imaginary Conversations," 103. 

Imperial College, the, 56. 

India, mosaic from, 1. 

Indian Museum, 73. 

Inge, Very Rev. Dean William 
Ralph, Plotinus discussed by, 
55; ethical tendencies arraigned 
by, 356; noble truths proclaimed 
by, 355, 356. 

Ingelow, Jean, 45, 274. 

"In Laleham Churchyard," 294. 

Institute of Mining and Metal- 
lurgy, 7. 

International Psychical Research 
Club, 166. 

lonides, Alexander, gift of, 121. 

"Irene MacGillicuddy," 288. 

Irving, Sir Henry, portrait of 
Richelieu studied by, 99; genius 
of, 255. 

Italy, 79. 



James, Henry, quoted, 40, 41, 

116. 
Janiculum, sunsets from, 213. 
Jenkin, Prof., calorie discussed 

by, 54. 
Jenkins, Herbert, publishing 

house of, 192. 
Jerusalem Chamber, the, 103. 



"Jesus est Amor mens," 318. 

"John Inglesant," 288. 

Johnson, Dr., 98; Rasselas of, 
186; memorial to, 189. 

Jones, Inigo, 179. 

, Sir William, Oriental learn- 
ing of, 189; monument to, 189. 

Jupiter, 15. 



Kabbala, the, 229. 

Keble, Dr., sermon of, 271. 

Keeble, Prof. Frederick, lecture 
of, 55. 

Keith, Prof. Arthur, Shakespear- 
ean data discussed by, 54. 

Kelvin, Lord (William Thomp- 
son), 74; scientific demands on 
age, 75; portrait of, 106; dis- 
coveries of, 275. 

Khedive, the, 2. 

Kingsford, Dr. Anna (nee Bonus), 
distinction of, 307; lineage of, 
307; artistic gifts of, 308; 
tribute to, 308. 

Kingsley, Rev. Canon Charles, 
135, 256; social ideals of, 266, 
273; daughter of, 279. 

Kipling, Rudyard, birth of, 280; 
fame of, 280. 

Kitchener, Lord, 8. 

Knight, Dr. William Angus, visit 
to Tennyson, 266; literature 
enriched by, 277; Col. Higgin- 
son's words of, 278; voluminous 
work of, 278; greatest authority 
on Wordsworth, 278, 279. 

Koran, the, 319. 



" Lachrymae Musarum," 295. 
Ladies Club, 152. 
Laking, Guy, 134. 



367 



INDEX 



Lambeth Palace, 244; majesty 
of, 314; state dining-room of, 
322; life in, 329. 

Landor, A. Henry Savage, travels 
of, 76; literary work of, 76; 
quoted, 76, 77. 

■ , Walter Savage, 20; por- 
traits of, 103; long-continued 
work of, 256. 

Landseer, Sir Walter, 35. 

Lane, John, 158; publishing house 
of, 191. 

, Mrs. John {nee Eichberg), 

distinction of, 289; brilliant 
work of, 289, 290. 

Langford, Charlotte (see Wilber- 
force), 339. 

Lansdowne, Marchioness of, 3, 
4; notable reception given by, 
4, 5, 6; orders worn by, 6. 

, Marquis of, 5, 6. 

House, 45, 207. 

Laud, Archbishop, 318. 

Lawrence, Sir Thomas, 70, 106; 
Angerstein painted by, 99. 

, Sir Walter, 54. 

Lee, Sir Sidney, monumental 
work of, 274, 275. 

Leibig, 69. 

Leighton, Lord Frederic, 45; 
Watts's portrait of, 105; presi- 
dent of Royal Academy, 111; 
personal characteristics of. 111, 
112; Watts's tribute to, 112; 
picture bought by Queen Vic- 
toria, 112; Mrs. Browning's 
friendship for, 112; splendid 
house of, 113; memorial to, 
189; Grosvenor Gallery ex- 
hibit of, 201; influence of 
Italian art on, 201, 261; in- 
fluence on his time of, 261; 
love for Rome of, 261. 

Lely, Sir Peter, 70. 

Leverrier, 69. 



Library, the Bodleian, 239; amus- 
ing experience in, 239, 240. 

, Boston Public, 138; libra- 
rian of, 238. 

Liddon, Rev. Canon Henry, spir- 
itual genius of, 273. 

"Life," Sir Oliver Lodge on, 
78. 

Lindsay, Lady, 200; social leader- 
ship of, 201; musical culture of, 
201; poetic power of, 201; 
famous circle of, 201, 202. 

, Sir Coutts, 43, 201; Gros- 
venor Gallery established by, 
201; 

Linnean Society, 70. 

"Little Nell," 186. 

Livingstone, Sir David, 204. 

"Loci dulcedo nos attinet," 13. 

Locke, John (On the Understand- 
ing), 70. 

, W. J., novels of, 290. 

Lodge, Sir Oliver, 74; scientific 
work of, 75; president of British 
Association, 78; influence of, 
306. 

London, lure of, 1. 

London Museum, 134. 

Londonderry, Marquis and Mar- 
chioness of, 6, 38. 

Longfellow, bust of, 356; quoted, 
356. 

"Lorna Doone," 288. 

Lort, Rev. Michael, 320. 

Louvre, the, 16. 

Lowell, James Russell, American 
Minister to England, 45. 

Lowther, Sir Gerald, 200. 

Luca della Robbia, 43. 

"Lucas Malet," pseud., 279. 

"Lucile," 290. 

Luther, Martin, 317. 

Lyceum Club, 152, 154. 

Lytton, Edward Robert, Earl of, 
("Owen Meredith," pseud.), 6; 



368 



INDEX 



London homes of, 21; diplo- 
matic honors of, 290; poetic 
work of, 290. 

M 

Macaulay, Lord Charles Bab- 
ington, 148; in Athenaeum 
Club, 148; style of, 273; t^tude 
introduced into English by, 
273. 

"Macbeth," 226. 

Mackay, Charles, quoted, 259, 
264. 

Maitland, Dr. Samuel Roffey, 
320. 

Malibran, Mme., 204. 

Mallock, William Hurrell, Ber- 
nard Shaw's controversy with, 
230, 231 ; unique work of, 
293. 

Manning, Cardinal William 
Henry, portrait of, 105; charac- 
ter of, 273. 

Manuel, King, 213. 

Marc Antonio, engravings from, 
207. 

Marcus Aurelius, bust of, 208; 
comparison with Carlyle, 272. 

Marie Antoinette, 120, 127. 

Marlborough, Duke of, 32; An- 
sidei Madonna of, 91. 

*'Marpessa," 296. 

Martineau, Rev. Dr. James, 277. 

Mary, Princess Royal, 194. 

, Queen, interest in social 

betterment, 193, 194; magnifi- 
cence of court of, 199; visit to 
Ascot of, 217; dines with Duke 
and Duchess of Devonshire on 
Derby Day, 196; court ideals 
of, 353. 

Mason, Mrs. Frank H., social 
leadership of, 153. 

Maurice, Rev. Dr. Frederick, 264. 



Mazarin, Cardinal, 131; vellum 
testament of, 317. 

McDougall, Dr. William, life of 
savage man discussed by, 53. 

Meath, Earl of, 164. 

"Mechanics of the Heavens, 
The," 281. 

"Medici, The," 164. 

Meredith, George, 288. 

"Merlin and the Gleam," 267. 

Mermaid Club, 172. 

Meynell, Alice, 282; lyrics of, 
282. 

, Wilfred, 282; Francis 

Thompson characterized by, 
287. 

" Middlemarch," 120; quoted, 302. 

Mill, John StuArt, portrait of, 
103; philosophic quality of, 
232, 263; conspicuous figure of, 
284. 

Millais, Sir John Everett, 106; 
noted picture of, 111; works of, 
122. 

Mills, Prof. Edmund J., 160. 

Milman, Very Rev. Dean, devo- 
tion to St. Paul's, 188, 189; 
History of St. Paul's written 
by, 191; history of Christianity 
by, 270; praised by Dean Stan- 
ley, 270. 

Milton, quoted, 96; home of, 178; 
Masson's words on, 187. 

Mitford, Mary, 184. 

"Modem Pamters," 258. 

Mond, Robert, 55. 

Mon Reale, 331. 

Monro, Harold, 159. 

Montagu, Lady Mary, 20. 

Monte Mario, 262. 

Montgomery, Sir William, 99. 

Moore, Sir Thomas, 20. 

Morley, Sir John, biography of 
Gladstone, 277. 

Morris, William, 257, 260, 273; 



369 



INDEX 



poetry of, 276; philanthropic 
work of, 276. 

Motley, Hon. John Lothrop, 45. 

Moulton, Louise Chandler, 45; 
letter to, 276; London recep- 
tions of, 294. 

Mount Carmel, 292. 

Movement, Tractarian, 271. 

Murray, John, publishing house 
of, 20, 191; friendship with 
Mrs. Somerville, 281. 

, Lindley, 350. 

, Professor Gilbert, 162; Eu- 
ripides translated by, 162; lec- 
ture on invisible realms, 162. 

Museum, British, 133, 141, 238. 

, Indian, 73. 

, London, 134, 138. 

, Soane, 113, 115. 

, Victoria and Albert (South 

Kensington), 118-123. 

Myers, Frederick William Henry, 
memorial lines to Watts, 109. 

N 

Naples, 12. 

Napoleon, statue of, 32, 197. 

National Club, 150. 

National Gallery, 13, 81, 100. 

National Portrait Gallery, 100, 
108. 

Nelson, Lord, monument to, 13, 
81, 88; Lady Hamilton's por- 
trait found in desk of, 149, 184. 

Neri, St. Philip, oratory of, 101. 

Neruda, Mme. Norman, 201. 

New Jerusalem, the, 335. 

Newman, Cardinal, portrait of, 
101; bust of, 101. 

Newton, Sir Isaac, early portrait 
in Royal Institution, 66; manu- 
script of, 68; portrait in Royal 
Society, 70; other portraits of, 
101, 102; bust of, 336. 



Nobel Institute, 56. 
Northumberland, Duke of, 50. 
Norton, Prof. Charles Eliot, 45; 

correspondence with Ruskin, 

259. 
Notre Dame, 351. 
Nottingham, Countess of, 183. 
Noyes, Alfred, 89. 



O 



Occult Club, 155. 

Oliphant, Laurence, meeting with 
Lord Salisbury, 148, 149; in- 
vited to Hatfield, 149; intro- 
duced to Prince of Wales (later 
Edward VII), 149; fascinating 
figure of, 288; wit of, 292; favor- 
ite guest at Mayfair dinners, 
292. 

, Margaret O. W., literary 

power of, 288; compared with 
George Eliot in characteriza- 
tion, 297. 

Olympian, the, 86. 

Oratory, the, 73, 101. 

Ornstein, Leon, concert playing 
of, 157; Futurist proclivities 
of, 157; quoted, 157, 158. 

"Owen Meredith," pseud., 21, 
290. 



Palace, Buckingham, new front 

of, 196, 243, 322. 

, Crystal, 222. 

, Lambeth, 244; majesty of, 

314; state dining-room of, 322; 

life in, 329. 
— — ; St. James, 28. 
Palazzo Vecchio, 314, 334. 
Palermo, 331. 
Palmerston, Lord, 60. 
"Paola and Francesca," 295. 



370 



INDEX 



"Paracelsus," 258. 

Paradise the Blest, 3. 

Park, St. James, 202. 

Parker, Sir Gilbert, 200. 

Paris, 12. 

Parliament Square, 21. 

Patison, Prof. Mark, 120. 

Patten, Prof. Charles J., 57. 

Peel, Sir Robert, view from 

National Gallery admired by, 

82; nemesis of, 83; statue of, 

83. 
Penn, William, 198. 
Pepys, quoted, 4; walks of, 179; 

diary of, 184. 
Peter the Great, 184. 
Petrie, Flinders, excavations made 

by, 89. 
"Phenomena of Life and Motion, 

The," 72. 
Philip IV, Velasquez portrait of, 

43. 
Phillips, Henry Wyndham, Watts 

painted by, 107. 
• , Stephen, 294; quoted, 295; 

dramatic intensity of, 295; 

Greek feeling of, 296. 
Phillpotts, Eden, 290. 
" Philosophia Naturalis, The," 68. 
Piafa Satrap, tomb of, 140. 
"Pied Piper, The," 349. 
Pitt, William, 335. 
Place de la Concorde, 82. 
Plato, Academy of, 16. 
Pliny, 56. 

Plotinus, lecture on, 85. 
Poetry Club, 158, 159. 
Poets Corner, the, 336. 
Pompadour, Mme. de, 120. 
Pope, Alexander, quoted, 22. 

, Pius VI, 130. 

, Pius X, 88. 

Posilipo, 85. 

Pre-Raphaelite Movement, 107. 

"Principia Mathematica," Sir 



Isaac Newton's Manuscript on, 
68. 

Procter, Adelaide Anne, 283, 284. 

, Bryan, 91. 

Pusey, Edward Bouverie, draw- 
ing of, 104. 

Pyramids, 85. 



Q 



"Quick and the Dead, The," 23. 



R 



RaflF, Joachim, 54. 

Rambouillet, Marquise de, 172. 

Raphael, cartoons of, 120. 

Rayleigh, Rt. Hon. Lord, 51, 53. 

"Recent Discoveries in Physical 
Science," 59. 

Rembrandt, 43. 

Renan, 67. 

"Republic, The New," 293. 

Revolution, French, 355. 

Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 70, 96; early 
life of, 97; president of Royal 
Academy, 97; visit to Italy of, 
97; Ruskin on, 98; London life 
of, 98, 99; Academy dinners 
founded by, 98; aim to decorate 
St. Paul's, 188. 

Rhodes, Cecil, Watts's portrait of, 
102. 

Richard III, 185. 

Richelieu, Cardinal, 99; portrait 
studied by Irving, 99. 

"Ring and the Book, The," 300. 

Ristori, Mme., 204. 

Ritchie, Lady {nee Thackeray), 
279. 

"Robert Elsmere," 280. 

Rodd, Sir Rennell, Greece set 
to music by, 281; diplomatic 
honors of, 281. 

Roman empire, court of, 59. 



371 



INDEX 



Rome, forum of, 16. 

Romney, George, Lady Hamilton 
painted by, 92. 

"Romola," 303. 

"Rose Aylmer," 283. 

Rosicrucian philosophy, the, 300. 

Rossetti, Christina, 107, 274. 

, Dante Gabriel, 106, 107; 

poem of, 258; glamour of, 273; 
Lavinia, 107. 

■ , William Michael, new order 

of criticism originated by, 258. 

Rossini, 204. 

Rothschild, Baron, house of, 19; 
splendid bequest of, 139. 

Route de roi, 33. 

Royal Institution, 49; founding of, 
51; purposes of, 57, 58; historic 
site of, 58; Count Rumford's 
words of, 60; portraits in, 64; 
Chair of Natural Philosophy 
in, 69; lecture of Dean Inge 
before, 356. 

Royal Society, 68. 

Ruskin, John, 15, 45; Fra Angel- 
ico interpreted by, 90; quoted, 
95; Sir Joshua criticised by, 97, 
98; Richmond's drawing of, 
106; works of, 258; Oxford 
Chair of, 259; correspondence 
with C. E. Norton, 259. 

Russell, Lord, execution of, 178; 
tablet regarding, 179. 

Square, 179. 

Rutland, Duke of, 194. 

Ruysdael, 43. 



Saint Esprit, Order of, 32. 
Saint Jerome, 318. 
Salem, Caleb Williams, 54. 
Salisbury, Lord, 74; Laurence Oli- 

phant introduced to Prince of 

Wales by, 149. 



Sand, George, pseud., 348. 

Sanderson, Lord, 71. 

San Francesco, convent church 
of, 334. 

San Marco, 331. 

San Paoli del fuori, 323. 

Sapphire Lodge, 209. 

Sardinia, chapel of, 186. 

Sargent, John Singer, 111, 263. 

Sarzano, Marquis of, 149. 

Savonarola, 303, 334. 

Scala di Spagna, 262. 

Schafer, Prof., address of, 77, 78. 

Schleswig-Holstein, Prince Chris- 
tian of, 32. 

Scott, Sir Walter, Chantrey's bust 
of, 32. 

"Secret Doctrine, The," 308. 

Selborne, Lady, 200. 

Sesame Club, 155. 

"Seven Lamps of Architecture," 
258. 

Sevoik, 200. 

"Shakespeare, 54, 348. 

Sharp, William, "secondary per- 
sonality" of, 275. 

Shaw, Bernard, 15, 230; witty re- 
joinder of, 231, 244. 

Sheba, Queen of, 46. 

Sheepshanks, John, munificent be- 
quest of, 119. 

Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, 107. 

, Percy Bysshe, 35, 107. 

"Shelley's Centenary," 294. 

Shorter, Clement, Bronte studies 
of, 287. 

Shorthouse, Joseph Henry, 286. 

Shylock, 236. 

Siam, King of, 160. 

Sibyl, figure of, 94. 

Siddons, Mrs., Gainsborough's 
portrait of, 99. 

Sidney, Sir Philip, 186. 

Siemens, Alexander, 51. 

Sinclair, May, 289. 



372 



INDEX 



Sinclair, Very Rev. William, 164. 

Sinnett, William P., esoteric sci- 
ence of, 305; quoted, 306, 307. 

"Sir Galahad," 345. 

Smalley, George W., 65; Huxley 
described by, 65, 66, 67. 

Smith, Arthur K., keeper of 
antiquities in British Museum, 
54. 

Smith and Elder, 192. 

Soane Museum, 113, 115. 

Society, American women of, 155. 

, Art and Drama, 161. 

, Buddhist, 160, 161. 

, Chemical, 70. 

, Fabian, 142, 143, 253. 

, Geological, 70. 

, Hardwicke, 163, 164. 

, Linnean, 70. 

, Royal, 68. 

of Civil Engineers, 70. 

"Some Chemical Agencies," 69. 

Somerset, Duchess of, 200. 

, Lady Henry, 6. 

House, 184, 203. 

Somerville, Mary, bust in Royal 
Institution, 64; portraits of, 
106; Victoria medal bestowed 
on, 280; correspondence with 
Herschel, 280; friendship with 
John Murray, 281; long life of, 
281; entombed in campo santo 
of Naples, 291. 

Sorabji, Cornelia, 154. 

Soult, Marshal, 32, 136. 

Spencer, Earl, 60. 

House, 185. 

Spielmann, M., quoted, 133, 134. 

Spohr, Ludwig, 54. 

Stafford House, 136, 137. 

Stanilaus, King, 130. 

Stanley, Dean Arthur Penrhyn, 
27; letter to, 28, 29; recumbent 
statue of, 105, 337; devotion to 
Abbey of, 337; book on, 338; 



memorial window of Queen 

Victoria to, 338. 
Stanley, Lady Augusta (nee Bruce), 

lady-in-waiting to Queen, 27; 

friendship of Queen for, 27, 

338; letter to Dean Stanley, 

28, 29. 
Stead, Rev. Herbert, Browning 

settlement work of, 251, 252, 

253. 
, William, tribute to, 344; 

home of, 344; work and life of, 

344, 345; moral heroism of, 

345. 
Steed, H. Wickham, 35. 
Stevenson, Robert Louis, 275. 
St. Ethelreda, chapel of, 185. 
St. Faith, chapel of, 333; inscrip- 
tion in, 334. 
St. James Park, 202. 
St. Paul's, Dean of, 55, 187, 

189. 
St. Peter's Cathedral, 187, 331, 

332. 
St. Stephen's Club, 150. 
Stock, Eliot, 191. 
"Stones of Venice," 258. 
Strand, the, 184. 
Stubbs, Rev. William, 321. 
Sumner, Charles, 204. 
Sutherland, Duke and Duchess 

of, 6. 
Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 

Watts's portrait of, 106, 201; 

genius of, 290; scholarship of, 

291. 



Tagore, Rabindrath, 161; quoted, 

210. 
Tait, Archbishop, 315. 
, Mrs., 315; hospitalities of, 

315. 
Talleyrand, 40. 



373 



INDEX 



Tate, Sir Henry, 108. 

Gallery, 81, 108. 

Teck, Prince Alexander of, 213. 

Teniers, 33. 

Tennyson, Lord Alfred, 45, 68; 
quoted, 103, 104; busts and 
portraits of, 105; lines to Vic- 
toria, 265; lyric music of, 265; 
visit of Prof. Knight to, 266; 
spiritual autobiography in 
"Merlin, 267, 268; friendship 
with Queen, 268, 269; Queen's 
diary record regarding, 269. 

"Test, The," 284. 

Teufelsdrbckh, 142, 349. 

Tetrazzini, Mme., 200. 

Thackeray, William Makepeace, 
20, 178, 182; shams ridiculed 
by, 264. 

Thames, river parties on, 202. 

Thompson, Benjamin (Count 
Rumford), Royal Institution 
founded by, 59; life of, 59, 60. 

, Dr. d'Arcy W., 56. 

, Francis, poetic life of, 281; 

praised by Wilfred Meynell, 
282. 

• , Prof. Sir Joseph John, 55; 

Chair in Royal Institute of, 55; 
scientific genius of, 55; lectures 
of, 64. 

, Silvanus P., 56. 

, William (Lord Kelvin), im- 
portant discoveries of, 336. 

Thurloe, Secretary, state papers 
concealed by, 180. 

Ticknor, Prof. George, 45; enter- 
tained by Lord and Lady Lans- 
downe, 208; Lady Holland de- 
scribed by, 208; noted people 
met by, 208, 209; Lady Lans- 
downe pictured by, 209; quoted, 
208, 209. 

Tillotson, Archbishop, portrait 
of, 207; autograph of, 317. 



Times Book Club, 165. 

Tintoretto, 43. 

Tippoo Sultan, 319. 

Titian, 43. 

Toledo, Eleanora di, portrait of, 
128. 

"Tom Jones," 178. 

TroUope, Anthony, gift to Athe- 
naeum Club, 148. 

Tube, the London, 242. 

Turner, Joseph Henry Maillard, 
92; art of, 92; poetic vision of, 
92; Ruskin's words on, 92, 93; 
Hamerton on, 93, 94; beauty 
created by, 94, 95; bequest of, 
96. 

"Twelfth Night," 183. 

Tyler, Rev. Dr. Charles Mellen, 
Chair of Christian Ethics, 
200. 

Tyndall, Dr. John, bust of, 64, 
200; medallion of, 64; work 
of, 64; Tennyson dines with, 
68. 

U 

University Club, 154. 
Uzes, Duchess d', 158. 



Van Dyke, 33. 

Venezelos, M., 7. 

Venice, doges of, 1. 

Venus, 14. 

"Vernon, Dorothy," 194. 

Vernon, Lord, 43. 

Veronese, Paul, 11. 

Victoria, Queen, memorial sculp- 
ture to, 11; portrait in corona- 
tion robes, 107; Tennyson's 
lines to, 176; visits of, 204, 206, 
213; friendships of, 27, 28, 248; 
diary record of, 269, 332. 



374 



INDEX 



Victoria and Albert, Order of, 6. 

■ Museum (South Kensing- 
ton), 118-123. 

Victoria Eugenie, Queen of Spain, 
199. 

Villari, Prof. Pasquale, 304. 

Virgil, 56. 

Volta, 69. 

w 

Waagen, Dr., quoted, 207. 

Wadlin, Dr. Horace W., 238, 240. 

Wahl, Dr. Walter, 56. 

Waldstein, Dr. Charles, lecture 
of, 71. 

Wales, Prince of, gold cup won 
by, 214. 

Wallace, Dr. Abraham, 168. 

, Sir Richard, art collector- 
ship of, 12.5; inheritance of, 
126; Cross of Legion d'Honneur 
bestowed on, 126. 

, Lady (nee Castelnau), life 

in Hertford House, 126; be- 
quest to British nation, 126; 
boudoir of, 127; death of, 126. 

Gallery, 124. 

Walton, Isaak, 180. 

Ward, Mrs. Humphry, 152; 
social prestige of, 280. 

Warrender, Lady Maud, 198. 

Waterloo Gallery (in Apsley 
House), 33. 

Watson, William, lyric art of, 
294; Dr. Corson prophesied 
fame of, 294; quoted, 295. 

Watts, George Frederic, 101, 107, 
108; work of, 109; life of, 109; 
famous recognitions of, 109; 
Myers' poetic tribute to, 109; 
exhibition in Tate Gallery of, 
110; tribute to Lord Leigh ton, 
112. 

, Sir Isaac, 335. 



Watts-Dunton, Theodore, 268, 
277. 

"Way, The Perfect," 308. 

Webb, Sir Aston, 196. 

Wedmore, Sir Frederic, 290. 

, Mildred, quoted, 190. 

Wellesley, Arthur (Duke of Wel- 
lington), 31. 

Wellington, Duke of, 6; statue of, 
30. 

Wells, Herbert George, 234; work 
of, 234; quoted, 234; power of, 
234; prophecies of, 235; influ- 
ence of, 244. 

Westbrook, Harriet, see Shelley, 
35. 

Westminster Abbey, 16, 24; dis- 
tinction of, 331; Gladstone's 
state funeral in, 335, 336; 
cloisters of, 333; treasures of, 
342. 

Westminster Cathedral, 27. 

Whewell, Dr., 63. 

Whistler, James McNeil, drawing 
of, 103; art of, 314; London of, 
203, 263. 

White Eagle, order of, 59. 

Wilberforce, Dr. Albert Basil 
Orme, Archdeacon of Westmin- 
ster, 332; crowds throng to 
preaching of, 332; rector of St. 
John's, 338, 339; expression of, 
338; marriage of, 339; life of, 
339, 343; letter from Prince of 
Wales to, 340; visit to India 
of, 341; charm of preaching of, 
345; convictions of, 345. 

, Mrs. (nee Langford), noble 

energy of, 341, 342; lofty pur- 
poses of, 342; hospitalities of, 
342; death of, 338; memorial 
lilies to, 338. 

, Samuel, Lord Bishop of Ox- 
ford, 339, 343. 

, William, Parliamentariaa 



375 



INDEX 



leader and philanthropist, 21, 

60, 106. 
Windsor Castle, 213, 372. 
"Woman's Question, A," 283. 
Woolner, Thomas, 101. 
Woolsey, Cardinal, 180. 
Wotton. Henry, 317. 
Wren, Sir Christopher, 68, 187, 

190. 
Writers Club, 168. 



Young, Dr., 64. 



Zangwill, Israel, 164. 
Zeitgeist, the, 264. 
Zimmern, Helen, love for Florence, 
276. 



376 



IllillliiPaniw"'* 

022 120 893 6 



